Wormhole, a blockchain platform, claims to have recovered the $324 million stolen by hackers.
Wormhole’s developers reported Wednesday that hackers stole more than $324 million in cryptocurrencies from the popular blockchain bridge.
The platform establishes a link that allows cryptocurrency to be transferred between decentralized financial blockchain networks. Thieves made off with 120,000 wETH, or wrapped ethereum, valued roughly $324 million at current exchange rates, according to Wormhole in a flurry of tweets Wednesday afternoon. The network of the platform was also taken down for maintenance.
This is one of the largest crypto thefts of all time and the second-largest theft from a DeFi service, blockchain analysis firm Elliptic said in a statement. DeFi is any financial tool that uses blockchain technology to circumvent middleman institutions.
“The exploit appears to have allowed the attacker to mint 120,000 wrapped ETH on the Solana blockchain, 93,750 ETH of which was then transferred to the Ethereum blockchain,” Elliptic said in a blog post.
Certus One, the developers of Wormhole, offered the hacker a $10 million “bug bounty” for the exploit details and return of the cryptocurrency, according to a message shared by Elliptic’s Tom Robinson.
Wormhole on Thursday confirmed via Twitter that “all funds have been restored” and its services are back up. It also promised to share a full incident report.
