Hacked Crypto Firm Wormhole Loses Ether Worth $322 Million, Offers Hacker $10 Million to Return Funds

Cybercriminals have ramped up attacks on the crypto sector in recent times and law enforcement authorities around the world have issued warnings. Wormhole Portal, a crypto platform has emerged as the latest victim of a hack attack, which has costed the firm $322 million (roughly Rs. 2,410 crore) worth of Ether. The company addressed the subject on Twitter, while switching on the “maintenance mode” on its official website.

As per Wormhole’s most recent Twitter update, posted on Thursday, February 3, the vulnerability has been fixed.

The Wormhole portal allows people to switch from one cryptocurrency to another with Ethereum-based smart contracts. The platform changes the input cryptocurrency into a temporary internal token and then converts it into the user’s desired output cryptocurrency. Such portals are also called “blockchain bridges”.

The unidentified hacker is believed to have tricked the Wormhole network into releasing a significant amount of Ether and Solana coins for a small input, a report by The Record said.

Exact details on the execution of this hack attack remain unknown as for now.

Meanwhile, the compromised web-based portal is trying to convince the hacker to return the stolen funds. The company has extended an offer of $10 million (roughly Rs. 75 crore) for the same.

This is the second attack on a blockchain bridge in two weeks.

Last week, Qubit Finance lost $80 million (roughly Rs. 600 crore) after hackers breached its networks.

In its incident report, Qubit Finance said that the attacker was able to steal 206,809 Binance coins using a vulnerability in one of its Ethereum blockchain contracts.

The hacked platform has also reached out to the unknown exploiter via Twitter, asking for a refund of the stolen capital in exchange for a negotiable reward.

In 2021, the centralised elements of the Decentralised Finance (DeFi) protocol were breached by cyber criminals, amounting to over $1.3 billion (roughly Rs. 9,606 crore) in losses, a report by blockchain research firm CertiK had revealed.

Last year, US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as well as Indian police officials had also alerted crypto enthusiasts against scammers and hackers eyeing for opportunities to dupe them.