Thursday, February 3rd 2022
Hackers Siphon $320 Million Worth of Ethereum Through Solana's Wormhole Bridge
The latest hack in the crypto space has left a burning hole in the size of $320 million in Ethereum-competitor Solana. The exploit was done through Wormhole, a DeFi project that bridges the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. Wormhole acts as a liquidity provider for the Solana blockchain, and allows users to bring their Ethereum tokens to the chain in the form of wETH (wrapped Ethereum). Essentially, Wormhole acts as a custodian for users' ETH, and issues them a Solana-compatible wETH token, with which they can then conduct operations in the blockchain. It was this bridge that was hacked, with an estimated 120K wETH tokens - with a retail value of around $320 million - being minted with nothing to back their value. So far, this is the largest bridge hack in blockchain history.
Wormhole has announced that the bug which allowed the exploit has been patched, and that they're now working on restoring both the network and the stolen ETH funds so that trust in the value of wETH doesn't collapse due to dillution. Wormhole has in the meantime posted a message on the Ethereum main chain, suggesting a $10 million reward in return for the illegally minted wETH tokens: "We noticed that you were able to exploit the Solana VAA verification and mint tokens. We would like to offer you a whitehat agreement, and present you a bug bounty of $10 million for exploit details, and returning the wETH you have minted."
Solana, another Layer-1 blockchain that aims to compete with Ethereum and has been hailed time and time again as one of the potential "Ethereum killers", has been fraught with issues and network outages in the past few months, which have tanked its value from its all-time-high of $260 per $SOL down to the current $97 price - which slumped around 12% on news of the Wormhole exploit.
Sources:
Wormhole via Twitter, CryptoPotato
Wormhole has announced that the bug which allowed the exploit has been patched, and that they're now working on restoring both the network and the stolen ETH funds so that trust in the value of wETH doesn't collapse due to dillution. Wormhole has in the meantime posted a message on the Ethereum main chain, suggesting a $10 million reward in return for the illegally minted wETH tokens: "We noticed that you were able to exploit the Solana VAA verification and mint tokens. We would like to offer you a whitehat agreement, and present you a bug bounty of $10 million for exploit details, and returning the wETH you have minted."
25 Comments on Hackers Siphon $320 Million Worth of Ethereum Through Solana's Wormhole Bridge
Seriously, the ammount of nonsense is is astonishing. Solana is a recent-ish crypto currency that uses both Proof os stake and proof of history as a consensus mechanism (aka no mining). It quickly rose to fame (and market cap) for being much more efficient than existing coins like Eth or BTC.
This is not the first time Solana runs into problems (teething pains? who knows), but it's an emerging coin that breaks with the current norm of mining and proof of work (btc and eth) and something that we should want to succeed.
In.
Beta.
Unless you can name me one coin that isn't?
Also majority of them have barely enough intellect to write in some coherent manner, if they can write at all. Its really tied together, cause low intellect prohibits understanding of written word and putting facts together, which obviously results into fear of unknown, and given they know literally nothing, they fear everything and thus hate everything.
Plus some folks missed the money bus, so they just green with envy right now. :)
Subsequently, the clear and logical use case of a currency used for criminality by libertarians, drug dealers, murderers, etc., turned into a get rich quick scheme, and the payment mechanism (for which it was awful in the abstract given the existence of licensed, tested, insured, reversible, trusted alternatives, but just about bearable if you were forced to by the nature of the transaction) became less and less important over time, and it became a giant ponzi scheme consuming large amounts of electricity and hardware in short supply.
As it's an unregulated speculative market which has substantially regressed in the last decade in its utility, then I'm just here to laugh when all the shills and speculators lose their shirts.
I guess that's all crypto discussions in a nutshell (even more so in a tech forum), you're either a crypto bro or a crypto hater, NO IN BETWEEN!
Ofc vocal majority is ppl that have no clue about both crypto and FIAT. :D
Stop posting generic anti-crypto guff.
One thing I will and have dodged , it's. In the name bridge ?! IE door.
But whatever lol. I will probably get some hate there.
But anyway, isn't a good time for that crypto to Fork ? oh yeah, another thing the people managing the crypto can do when something bad happen for them. Like Ethereum and Ethereum classic. Ethereum forked and reverted back a lot of transaction when someone stole a huge amount of crypto. Since it impacted the richest people on that crypto, they forked it. But if it happen to you, you are screwed.
So maybe they are just going to fork this time?
So let me ask again what is the end goal here?
This is going to be my response to every NFT and crypto thread I see going forward: Folding Ideas' fantastic 2h18m (yes, it's long AF, but infinitely worth watching, and helpfully split into chapters) video on the topic.
I hope the US bans it and all the investors lose their investments in imaginary money and the hardware resources we keep making ewaste out of when there is already enough pressure on the silicon market.
The great minds right now seem to have an awful lot of trouble overcoming many of humanity's problems. And that includes the crypto community that calls itself a great mind. The results so far speak for themselves. The promises... yeah. The promises. All I see is yet another exponential money monster that leads to nothing but supposed wealth for those who are smarter than the next guy. I see progress at the cost of things that matter most.
I'll say it again
Forever.
In.
Beta.
Exactly like last time the big players will eventually sell out and bail and everything gonna crash in matter of days and there will be a lot of people like you that "understand" crypto that will be crying crocodile tears. Good luck!Well said! Thank you!