Hackers Hit Wormhole DeFi Project, Take $320M

Wormhole, a communication bridge between Solana and other decentralized finance (DeFi) blockchain networks, was hacked to the tune of about $320 million in cryptocurrency, according to a Bloomberg report Wednesday (Feb. 2).

The hackers were able to capture 120,000 wETH, or so-called wrapped ether. The project’s team later tweeted that the vulnerability was patched and they were working to get the network up and running again.

The wormhole network was exploited for 120k wETH.

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.

— Wormhole (@wormholecrypto) February 2, 2022

“This demonstrates once again that the security of DeFi services has not reached a level that is appropriate for the huge sums being stored within them,” Tom Robinson, co-founder of blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, said in the Bloomberg report. “The transparency of the blockchain is allowing attackers to identify and exploit major bugs.”

The hack is “likely one of the largest thefts from a DeFi protocol,” the report says. About 96,000 of the stolen wETH tokens were sent to the ethereum blockchain, another forensics provider, TRM Labs, told Bloomberg.

Wormhole developers had offered the hacker a $10 million bug bounty for details of how they breached the platform and the safe return of the funds, the report says.

This isn’t the first issue Solana has had with hackers. Last fall, the platform was down for 17 hours after attacks by trading software bots compromised the network’s performance, according to Bloomberg.

Related: Solana Trading Platform PsyOptions Acquires Tap Finance

Meanwhile, Solana’s options trading platform, PsyOptions, acquired Tap Finance this week as part of a plan to add structured investment to its suite of services.

PsyOptions paid for Tap Finance using both cash and crypto tokens, and the companies didn’t reveal the value of the transaction. Tap will rebrand as PsyFinance when the deal becomes official, although the company said in a blog post that the changes would be “cosmetic in nature.”