Hackers steal $ 320 million worth of cryptocurrencies from Wormhole

LAST UPDATE: 16:39

One of the most popular “bridges” connecting ethereum and solana lost more than $ 320 million on Wednesday afternoon in an unprecedented hacker attack.

It is the biggest attack to date on solana, an ethereum rival that is gaining more and more interest in NFT and DeFi ecosystems.

The cryptocurrency site Wormhole wrote on Twitter on Thursday that “all funds have been restored” and that its website is up and running again after being hit by the attack.

The Decentralized Financing Platform (DeFi) did not provide further details, nor did it respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

Ethereum is the most widely used blockchain and is a major player in the world of DeFi, where so-called “smart contracts” can replace intermediaries such as banks and lawyers in certain types of business transactions. A more recently introduced competitor, solana, is becoming increasingly popular because it is cheaper and faster to use than ethereum.

Cryptocurrencies often do not operate exclusively on a blockchain ecosystem, so developers have created cross-chain bridges to allow users to send cryptocurrencies from one ecosystem to another.

Wormhole is a protocol that allows users to move their tokens and NFTs between solana and ethereum.

Bridges like Wormhole work with two smart contracts – one in each chain, according to Auston Bunsen, co-founder of QuikNode, which provides blockchain infrastructure to developers and companies. In this case, there was one smart contract on solana and one on ethereum. A bridge like Wormhole takes an ethereum badge, locks it in a contract on one side, and then on the other side of the bridge, issues a parallel badge.

Preliminary analysis by CertiK shows that the attacker exploited a vulnerability on the solana side of the Wormhole Bridge to create for itself 120,000 so-called “wrapped” token ethereum. (Wrapped ether badges are linked to the value of the original currency, but are interoperable with other blockchains). It seems that they then used these insignia to claim the ethereum that was held on the ethereum side of the bridge.

Encryption platforms have faced a number of attacks in recent months.

“The $ 320 million Wormhole Bridge attack underscores the growing trend of attacks against blockchain protocols,” said CertiK co-founder Ronghui Gu. “This attack is sounding the alarm on blockchain security.”