- Infamous Wormhole hacker moves $155 million of the stolen funds to a decentralized exchange (DEX).
- Wormhole Bridge reiterates the offer of giving the hacker a $10 million bounty if they surrender the remaining stolen funds.
- Ancilla Inc alerts users of phishing websites like Wormhole’s website on Google search.
Last year’s incident has returned to haunt Wormhole token bridge, a communication bridge between Solana and other decentralized finances (DeFi), as its hacker recently made noticeable transactions that piqued the interest of crypto trackers and security firms.
On January 23, the Wormhole Bridge hacker moved $155 million worth of ETH to a decentralized exchange (DEX) and conducted many other questionable transactions, which forced the bridge to reiterate its offer of paying the hacker $10 million if they would surrender what was left of the 120,000 ETH or $321 million.
Considered one of the biggest crypto hacks in 2022, the Wormhole bridge hacker returned to the spotlight by transferring 95,630 ETH to OpenOcean DEX and then converting them into Ether-pegged assets like wrapped staked ETH (wstETH) and Lido Finance’s staked ETH (stETH).
According to the smart contract auditing firm, Certik Alert announced that the transaction history depicted the movement of Ether (ETH) from the hacker’s wallet address (0x629e) to OpenOcean Exchange.
Upon being notified of this news, the crypto community dug deeper into the Wormhole hacker’s transaction history and discovered how the $155 million was dispersed. Spreekaway, a member of the cryptocurrency community, revealed the rest of the actions carried out by the hacker.
“Wormhole exploiter has converted his ETH to wstETH and is going to borrow DAI against it,” Spreekaway tweeted.
According to Spreek, the hacker used their staked ETH (stETH) holdings as collateral to borrow DAI stablecoins worth $13 million, converted the stablecoins for some staked ETH, and wrapped the stETH once more before borrowing more DAI stablecoins worth $1.5 million.
According to a report submitted by Dune Analytics, the actions caused by the Wormhole hacker had some impact on the price of staked ETH (stETH) as the asset’s price increased from 0.9962 ETH to 1.0002 ETH.
Ancilla warns users not to fall for phishing sites
In light of the recent event with the Wormhole token bridge hacker, Ancilla Inc., a blockchain security firm, also took to Twitter to warn users of the phishing websites similar to Wormhole’s site when it was searched on Google.
“When you search ‘Wormhole Bridge’ in Google, several of the ‘ad’ entries are phishing sites,” Ancilla announced.
The security firm warned users to be conscious of the personal information they shared on websites and to exercise vigilance when typing and opening websites.
Wormhole Bridge offers bounties to hackers.
After stealing $321 million worth of crypto assets and becoming the third-largest crypto hack in 2022, Wormhole bridge wrote an embedded message attached to the transactions. It addressed the exploiter during transactions that the hacker performed on January 23.
Wormhole promised to pay the hacker $10 million if they would surrender all assets in their possession and also attached an email link the hacker could contact.
“We would like to reiterate our previous offer of a $10 million bounty for the total return of all the stolen funds,” the message read.
Wormhole token bridge exploiter steals $321 million.
In February 2022, the Wormhole token bridge lost 120,000 Wrapped ETH (wETH) tokens worth $321 million due to a security exploit on the platform. The hack was carried out on Solana’s side of the bridge as Wormhole is a token bridge that connects users to multiple blockchains such as Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, and many more without the help of a CEX (Centralized Exchange), allowing the users to send or receive cryptocurrencies between these platforms.
The hacker minted 120,000 wETH on Solana and used the majority of the funds to make purchases such as Bored Ape Yacht Club Token (APE), Meta Capital (MCAP), and SportX (SX). The hacker traded some of the wETH for Solana (SOL) and USDC on Solana.
Conclusion
Almost a year after Wormhole lost $321 million to a hacker, the crypto community has learned of recent transactions made by the hacker as the hacker moved funds worth $155 million while conducting other questionable transactions.
