Crypto Worth Over $320 Million Taken in Wormhole Hack

investopedia.com:

Wormhole, one of the most popular bridges that link the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, has suffered a theft of cryptocurrencies worth over $320 million in an apparent hack that took place on Feb. 2, 2022. These two blockchains are popular in the worlds of decentralized finance (DeFi), where programmable contracts can replace lawyers and bankers in some transactions, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

However, on Feb. 3, 2022, Wormhole indicated that «all funds have been restored,» that its services have come back online, and that it is preparing a full incident report. Certus One, the developers of Wormhole, offered the hackers a $10 million «bug bounty» for details of their «exploit» and return of the stolen cryptocurrency.

Ethereum is the most utilized blockchain network, including being a major participant big player in DeFi, where programmable pieces of code known as smart contracts can replace intermediaries such as banks and lawyers in certain types of business transactions.

A newer competitor, Solana, is enjoying growing popularity due to lower cost and greater speed than Ethereum. Wormhole is a protocol that allows users to shift their tokens and NFTs between Solana and Ethereum.

Blockchain cybersecurity firm CertiK finds that the Wormhole hacker's takings include at least $251 million worth of Ethereum, almost $47 million in Solana, plus more than $4 million in USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the price of the U.S. dollar.

Since few users use only one blockchain exclusively, bridges such as Wormhole have become important intermediaries that allow users to shift cryptocurrency holdings between chains. The $320 million theft is the second-biggest since $600 million worth of tokens were stolen from cryptocurrency