After hackers stole more than $320 million from its site in the fourth-largest crypto heist on record, cryptocurrency platform Wormhole stated on Thursday that “all money are safe.”
Wormhole https://wormholenetwork.com, which allows information to be transferred across crypto networks, stated on Twitter on Wednesday that it had been “exploited” for 120,000 units of ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency. The market value of the tokens was little over $320 million at the time of the announcement.
The robbery was the latest to rock the fast-growing but mostly unregulated decentralised finance (DeFi) platforms, which allow users to lend, borrow, and save – usually in cryptocurrency – without going through traditional financial gatekeepers like banks.
Early on Thursday, Wormhole tweeted that “the vulnerability has been addressed” and that it was trying to restore service to the network. “A patch has been implemented and all funds are safe,” a statement on Wormhole’s Telegram channel later read, without providing any specifics.
Wormhole did not reply to several Reuters social media inquiries for comment. Wormhole, like many other DeFi sites, provides scant data about its location or construction.
According to Elliptic, a London-based blockchain analysis business, attackers were able to issue the wETH tokens fraudulently, with over 94,000 of them later moved to the ethereum blockchain, which supports ether transactions.
According to messages contained within ether transactions delivered to the attacker’s digital address, Wormhole has offered the attacker a $10 million “bounty” to return the funds.
