A new chilling cryptocurrency theft exposes the security of blockchain platforms. Wormhole, a DeFi cryptocurrency exchange protocol, announced on February 2 that it had been the victim of an unknown hack that allowed a hacker to extract $325 million in cryptocurrencies from the platform's coffers.
In the world of decentralized finance, a blockchain protocol known as a "bridge" is created to provide operability between DeFi blockchain networks to enable the secure transfer of tokens from one chain to another.
At least, this is how it is supposed to work, but clearly, this is not what happened with Wormhole, which alerted this week that an exploit had allowed a hacker to steal 120000 wETH which equated during the time of the theft, to approximately $325 million. It's not worth delving into the technical alchemy required to pull this off, but suffice it to say that it left many users wondering what the fuck had just happened to their money.
After the hacker caused mass hysteria on Twitter, the platform did its best to calm the waters, but users' concerns were more than justified: Wormhole occupies an important space within DeFi platforms, as it represents an important avenue between the Solana ecosystem and other decentralized networks for asset exchange.
The platform offered the hacker a "bounty" of 10 million, in exchange for returning the funds he had stolen from it. We have seen similar offers before, such as when last summer the DeFi Poly Network platform was hacked and lost more than 600 million. Interestingly, on that occasion, the tactic worked, although here the hacker seems to have ignored the offer.
Just when things were looking worse for Wormhole, the platform surprised everyone this Thursday by claiming that somehow everything was back to normal. The company tweeted that its systems had been "patched" and that "all funds" that had disappeared during the hack "had been restored." It certainly sounded like good news, but it wasn't entirely clear about Wormhole's claims either. Had the hacker returned the money or had someone ransomed the company?
It soon became clear that the hacker had not returned a penny and that Jump Crypto, Wormhole's parent company, had replenished the platform's funds to prevent it from collapsing with a massive outflow of people frightened by the theft.
Undoubtedly, this is another "fun adventure" in the world of decentralized finance. According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, this incident represents the fourth largest cryptocurrency theft of all time, second only to the notorious Mt. Gox catastrophe on 2017, and already more than $2 billion has gone missing in similar thefts.
While DeFi platforms are supposed to be a fundamental pillar in the utopian dream of a world ruled by the blockchain, there is growing evidence that it is an excellent mechanism for losing a lot of money, especially when there is a hacker nearby snooping around to see if he can find a way to breach the security systems of platforms that operate with cryptocurrencies.
What do you think about this news, do you dare to keep your money in the form of cryptocurrencies, let us know your opinion in the comments box.
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