Wormhole Network's Cross-Chain Bridge Exploited for Over $320 Million in Ethereum

Reports indicate that the Wormhole Network’s ethereum ↔ solana bi-directional bridge has been exploited by an attacker for *120,000 ether or more than $320 million using today’s ethereum exchange rates. The developers behind the Wormhole Network have told the public the network is “down for maintenance,” as the team “looks into a potential exploit.”

*Editor’s Note: This post and headline has been updated to reflect new information provided by the Wormhole team that says the bridge was exploited for 120,000 WETH.

Wormhole Network’s Ethereum ↔ Solana Bridge Exploited, 120,000 Ethereum Siphoned

• According to various reports and a few onchain transactions the Wormhole Network’s crosschain ethereum ↔ solana bridge has been exploited for *$320 million in ether or *120,000 ETH.
• While the team has not published a post mortem, the Wormhole Network developers published a tweet that said the network was down for the time being.
• “The wormhole network is down for maintenance as we look into a potential exploit,” the tweet said. “We will provide updates here as soon as we have them. Thank you for your patience.”
• Other accounts of the situation noted that the attacker was exploiting Solana (SOL) too in addition to the stolen ether. “Okay this is too interesting to stay away. Looks like the wormhole exploiter is wreaking havoc on the Solana side too,” the Twitter account dubbed Robot Dad said on Wednesday.
• When someone remarked on social media that the Wormhole Network used the term “potential,” others shared an onchain message that was sent to the attacker from the Wormhole Deployer.
• The message states: “This is the Wormhole Deployer. We noticed you were able to exploit the Solana VAA verification and mint tokens. 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.”

• Wormhole Network’s ethereum ↔ solana bi-directional bridge has not been around for very long, as Bitcoin.com News recently reported on the cross-chain bridge launch on September 19.
• The ethereum ↔ solana cross-chain bridge exploit follows the $80 million siphoned from the Qubit cross-chain bridge five days ago. At the time the Qubit attack was the largest defi exploit of 2022.
• The Wormhole Network’s exploit is now the largest decentralized finance (defi) breach in 2022 so far, with more than $320 million in ethereum stolen.
• The @wormholecrypto Twitter account updated the public at 5:25 p.m. (EST) and explained that 120,000 WETH was stolen. WETH is a form of wrapped or tokenized ethereum (ETH).
• “The Wormhole Network was exploited for 120k WETH. ETH will be added over the next hours to ensure WETH is backed 1:1,” the team tweeted. “More details to come shortly. We are working to get the network back up quickly. Thanks for your patience.”