Wormhole Bridge registrerar 2022:s största förlust i ett DeFi‑hack hittills, Solanas pris faller med över 8%

Förra året var drabbat av exploateringar över hela blockchain‑området, och 2022 verkar följa samma bana. I det som i DeFi‑historien har gått till historien som det näst största exploatet, den populära tvär‑blockkedjebryggan Wormhole Token Bridge, avslöjade sent på onsdagen att ett säkerhetsexploit hade lett till att den saknade 120 000 Wrapped Ether (wETH) till ett värde av 321 miljoner dollar.

Den största attacken mot Solana hittills

The exploit occurred yesterday at 18:26 UTC. The rogue entity minted the tokens on Solana and converted 93,750 into ETH, worth around $254 million at the time. The attacker spent some of the funds stolen and bought tokens, including Finally Usable Crypto Karma (FUCK) and Meta Capital (MCAP).

De återstående token konverterades till SOL och USDC. Vid skrivandet av detta hade hackerns Solana wallet 432,662.14 SOL, worth about 42 million.

Wormhole told users that it had taken the network down for maintenance as it looked into the matter. A blockchain message sent on Wednesday 23:16:07 has since revealed that the Wormhole team had attempted to contact the hacker to come to a “white hat agreement.” The deployer proposed a $10 million bug bounty for details on the exploit and return of the stolen wETH.

Meddelandet till angriparen avslöjade dessutom att hacken för att skapa token hade möjliggjorts genom ett brott mot Wormholes Solana VAA‑verifiering.

The exploit alarmed the DeFi communities over concerns that ETH that had been bridged to Solana was no longer backed. However, the interoperability protocol’s team guaranteed that Ether would be readded to restore the ratio of wETH’s backing with ETH to 1:1.

De stulna medlen har återställts

Wormhole confirmed Thursday morning that the vulnerability had been fixed, reassuring users about the safety of the funds. The team has also said this afternoon that the bridge is back up again and said it would release a detailed incident report once it is ready.

“All funds have been restored and Wormhole is back up. We’re deeply grateful for your support and thank you for your patience,” the team said.

Wormhole operates by locking a token onto a smart contract on one chain and deploying a parallel token in a second chain. Users can therefore move tokens across these ecosystems. Primarily, the interactivity occurs between Solana and Ethereum blockchains, but it can handle other chains like Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and Terra.

Risken med att korsa bryggor

The exploit comes just a few weeks since Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin highlighted that cross-bridges bear significant shortcomings that could expose tokens to security risks. Buterin decried that cross-chains present vulnerability as consensus rules do not confine them.He explained, at the time, that he anticipated that the repercussions of bridges’ weaknesses would surface as transactional volumes on the bridges increase. Moreover, while no other assets have been affected, cybersecurity auditing firm Certik noted that Terra’s bridge to Solana showed the “same vulnerability as their Solana bridge.”

Solanas problem

The price of Solana’s native token SOL tanked after the news of the exploit broke. From a high of around $111, SOL/USD crashed to $98 before seeing further losses. The crash was worsened by the recession that has affected the market in the last couple of hours. SOL is currently changing hands at $97.33, down 8.85% in the last 24 hours as per data from crypto tracking site Coinmarketcap.

SOL/USD 24‑timmars handelsdiagram

Wormhole‑incidenten inträffar när Solana är drabbat av flera problem och även om detta inte var Solanas fel, ger det ett dåligt intryck. Den högpresterande offentliga blockkedjan har nyligen varit offer för frekventa nätverksprestandaproblem som har fått många att ifrågasätta dess status som ett pålitligt Ethereum‑alternativ.