A Solana-based blockchain bridge has been hacked to the tune of $320,000,000 worth of leading altcoin Ethereum (ETH).
Wormhole, a cross-chain platform that allows users to transfer crypto assets between different blockchains, took to Twitter to confirm the hack to its 41,000 subscribers.
“The Wormhole Network was exploited for 120,000 Wrapped Ethereum (wETH).
ETH will be added over the next hours to ensure wETH is backed 1:1.”
According to the interoperable blockchain, the vulnerability is now patched, meaning that all wrapped Ethereum (wETH), the ERC-20 compatible version of ETH, is once again backed 1:1, and the token bridge is back up and running.
“All funds have been restored and Wormhole is back up.
We’re deeply grateful for your support and thank you for your patience.”
After the hack took place, a Wormhole representative sprung to action and sent a message to the fraudster, offering a whitehat agreement which would exchange a bounty of $10 million for the tokens they stole and information on how they managed to exploit Wormhole’s system.
“We noticed you were able to exploit the Solana VAA verification and mint tokens. We’d like to offer you a whitehat agreement, and present you a bug bounty of $10 million for exploit details, and returning the wETH you’ve minted.”
Ethereum search engine EtherScan was able to track about half of the tokens stolen by the scammer. One transaction saw 80,000 wETH sent to the bad actor, who went by the name “Wormhole Network Exploiter.”
Ethereum is exchanging hands at $2,618 at time of writing, an 11% increase from its seven-day low of $2,353.
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