Wormhole Says $320 Million Stolen Has Been Restored

Wormhole Protocol, a bridge between the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, has recently reported that all the exploited funds have been restored.

In a tweet on 3rd February, Wormhole said its network is back online and all funds have been restored.

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

The official account added, “The team is working on a detailed incident report and will share it asap.”

Particularly, the interoperability protocol, which acts as a link between the Solana and Ethereum blockchains, was specifically targeted, which resulted in significant losses for Solana traders in the second-largest attack to hit the nascent decentralized finance (DeFi) sector.

Wormhole is a bridging protocol that enables assets to move across various blockchain protocols. When a user sends assets from one chain to another, the bridge locks the assets and mints a wrapped version of the funds on the destination chain.

How the Exploit Played Out

Notably, the hacker carried out an unlawful mint of 120,000 wETH, which was valued at around $322 million at the time. They carried out the assault by taking advantage of a Solana VAA weakness, a bridge function that verifies asset transfers.

Wormhole initially reported the incident on 2nd February, after hackers exploited the vulnerability, the network tweeted,“The Wormhole network is down for maintenance as we look into a potential exploit.” 

A deficiency in the Ethereum-compatible cross-chain bridge enabled a hacker to drain 120,000 ETH from a smart contract that was facing the Ethereum blockchain at about 18:24 UTC.

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