Wormhole bridging Ethereum and Solana hacked for $320M

Wormhole, a bridge linking Ethereum (ETH/USD) and Solana (SOL/USD) blockchains, lost over $320 million in a recent hack. This is the second-largest hack in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector after the $600M hack on the Poly Network.

This is the largest attack on the Solana blockchain. Solana has gained significantly over the past year in terms of adoption. Due to its scalability, the Solana community believes it could be a potential Ethereum killer.

$320M Wormhole exploit

Cryptocurrency holders usually do not operate on one blockchain. Hence, developers have built bridges that allow users to send their assets from one blockchain to the other. Wormhole is a bridge that allows users to transfer their tokens and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) between Ethereum and Solana.

Wormhole developers confirmed this exploit on Twitter, stating that the network was “down for maintenance.”

“The wormhole network was exploited for 120K wETH. 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,” the tweet noted.

According to CertiK, a blockchain cybersecurity firm, the hacker had received around $251 million worth of Ether tokens, around $47 million worth of Solana, and over $4 million worth of the USDC stablecoin.

The Wormhole bridge has two smart contracts on Ethereum and Solana. The Wormhole bridge uses one Ether token, locks it into a contract on one chain and then issues a parallel token on the other chain.

The CertiK research shows that the attacker exploited a bug on the Solana chain to create 120,000 wrapped Ethereum tokens. The attackers then used the wETH to claim Ether on the Ethereum chain.

Wormhole mitigating the attack

The Wormhole bridge held the same amount of Ethereum and wrapped Ethereum tokens. However, CertiK notes that following this exploit, “there is at least 93,750 less ETH held as collateral.”

Wormhole noted that Ether would be added to the bridge “over the next hours” to restore the escrow amount. The network has also confirmed that the vulnerability has been patched, and the network would be restored.

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