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Wormhole, a cross-chain protocol, reported that it was hacked. As a result of an exploit, around 120.000 wETH was lost. Wormhole said that the protocol will add Ethers over the following hours to make sure that wETH is backed 1:1.
Later, the protocol went down for maintenance and for the team to look into a potential exploit. Afterwards, Wormhole said that the team patched the vulnerability and was working to get the network backup in the shortest possible time.
The wormhole network was exploited for 120k wETH.
— Wormhole🌪 (@wormholecrypto) February 2, 2022
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 hack was one of the largest attacks in DeFi.
According to blockchain security and analytics platform Certik, the attacker gained at least $251 M worth of Ether, $47 M in SOL, and over $4 M in USDC.
Wormhole and other cross-chain bridges lock tokens into a smart contract on one chain and then issue a parallel token. Thus, they allow users to move tokens across different blockchains.
Earlier, in January, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin presented his analysis of blockchain interoperability. He pointed out the security issues of chain bridges. Buterin believes the future will be multichain, but not cross-chain.