Wormhole, which is described as a communication bridge between Solana (SOL) and other DeFi/blockchain platforms, claims that bad actors stole around $320 million in virtual currency.
The wormhole network was exploited for 120k wETH.
ETH will be added over the next hours to ensure wETH is backed 1:1. More details to come shortly.
We are working to get the network back up quickly. Thanks for your patience.
— Wormhole🌪 (@wormholecrypto) February 2, 2022
The hackers have allegedly taken 120,000 wETH (wrapped Ether). This, according to the initiative’s team members. The team also confirmed that they would add more Ethereum during the next few hours in order to make sure the wETH is completely backed 1-for-1 and will be getting the network up again.
The social media post from the project did not provide details on where the team will be acquiring the Ether. According to an update, the source-code vulnerability has now been addressed.
The vulnerability has been patched.
We are working to get the network back up as soon as possible.
— Wormhole🌪 (@wormholecrypto) February 3, 2022
Tom Robinson, Co-founder of blockchain company Elliptic, remarked:
“This demonstrates once again that the security of DeFi services has not reached a level that is appropriate for the huge sums being stored within them. The transparency of the blockchain is allowing attackers to identify and exploit major bugs.”
This recent exploit is notably one of the biggest thefts from a crypto/DeFi protocol. These new platforms have claimed that they allow users to avoid third-parties to borrow and lend crypto-assets.
Around 96,000 wETH tokens had reportedly been sent to the Ethereum blockchain. This, according to an update from TRM Labs (shared by Bloomberg).
To confirm, the Wormhole network had been exploited for 120,000 wETH. But more ETH will be added to make sure wETH is backed 1:1. More information regarding this is expected to be confirmed soon.
Wormhole developers notably offered the attacker(s) a $10M bug bounty for exploit details and the (hopeful) return of the assets.
In August of last year, Jump Trading Group had confirmed that it purchased Certus One, which was instrumental in creating Wormhole.
Jump Trading had noted that it’s a founding source-code contributor to the Wormhole project. Certus One provides the infrastructure services for PoS (or proof-of-stake) chains and has been a key participant in networks like Cosmos, Solana, and Terra.
It’s worth noting that the recent Wormhole exploit only adds to other issues for Solana, the blockchain that claims to offer low-cost transactions that are supposed to be more efficient than Ethereum.
Recently, the Solana network experienced performance issues and had been down for around 17 hours following major attacks from trading bots (which degraded the SOL network’s performance).