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Dimapur, Feb. 3 (EMN): Cross-chain decentralised finance (DeFi) platform Wormhole has confirmed that hackers have stolen more than $320 million in cryptocurrency from the platform on Wednesday.
Wormhole is a DeFi platform that acts as a bridge to enable transactions between two different blockchains. It essentially converts a user's token on the departing chain into a wrapped version of another token in the destination chain. Once the wrapped token reaches the destination chain, it can be swapped for the native token on the destination chain, and thereby, allows cross-chain transactions between two blockchains.
The wormhole network was exploited for 120k wETH.
— Wormhole🌪 (@wormholecrypto) February 2, 2022
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.
In a series of tweets, the cryptocurrency platform said that hackers were able to siphon off 120,000 wETH (wrapped Ether) from the platform via an exploit in the platform's code.
The company has since patched the exploit in its system and has assured its users that all funds had been restored. Apart from a brief suspension, the network has now resumed normal operations.
"All funds have been restored and Wormhole is back up," the platform said on Twitter.
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— Wormhole🌪 (@wormholecrypto) February 3, 2022
All funds have been restored and Wormhole is back up.
We're deeply grateful for your support and thank you for your patience.
The incident is thought be the fourth largest crypto heist of all time. Despite their unprecedented growth, DeFi platforms have emerged as a major hacking risk in recent years. For instance, last August, hackers managed to steal more than $610 million from the DeFi site Poly Network before returning all of the assets back to the site. In another recent incident, hackers stole $80 million from Qubit Finance, a DeFi platform on January 27.