Ethereum-Solana bridge on Wormhole network exploited for $320 million in wETH

Attackers exploited the Ethereum-Solana bi-directional bridge for $320 million in wETH. The developers behind the Wormhole network are investigating the exploit and patching the vulnerability. 

120,000 wrapped Ether lost in Wormhole network exploit 

The team behind the Wormhole network, an interoperability protocol that facilitates the transfer of cryptocurrencies cross-chain, is investigating the exploit during the downtime. The Ethereum-Solana bi-directional bridge was hacked for $320 million worth of wETH. 

Developers have published a report with details of the exploit. The report reveals that the Solana network was the attacker’s target, in addition to Wormhole’s bi-directional bridge. 

Proponents of the Wormhole network investigated the exploit and identified how the hack was carried out. The vulnerability that was exploited was identified on January 13 by the development team. The team patched the exploit earlier today by pushing out code on Github. 

Soon after the Github update, attackers exploited the vulnerability. 

The Wormhole network offered the hacker a bug bounty of $10 million for the exploit in exchange for the minted wETH. The offer reads:

We’d like to offer you a whitehat agreement and present you a bug bounty of $10 million for exploit details and returning the wETH you’ve minted.

The Qubit Finance attack was considered the largest DeFi exploit, with $80 million in cryptocurrencies lost. However, the recent Wormhole network exploit qualifies as the largest DeFi hack of 2022. 

Experts believe that the exploit of the Ethereum-Solana bridge has negatively impacted the latter. Solana has suffered four outages in the recent past, and the supposed Ethereum-killer was targeted by exploiters in the latest exploit. Solana has posted 10% losses overnight in response to the news of the hack, aside from other factors influencing the altcoin’s price trend. 

FXStreet analysts have evaluated the Solana price trend and noted that the altcoin struggles to hold support and the outlook remains mixed.