B612 Security

Alex Filippov breaks Ethereum for a living. - Won the Ethereum Foundation's $2M Pectra competition ($342K), $203K from a single Lighthouse High - Won the Ethereum Fusaka contest with 2 solo Highs ($155K) - #3 all-time on Cantina ($542K+) We asked @alexfilippov314 how he splits the work with AI 👇

A hacker exploited a flaw in Wormhole and created 120,000 wrapped ETH out of thin air, stealing $326 MILLION from a crypto bridge in a matter of minutes. > On February 2, 2022, an attacker targeted Wormhole, a bridge that lets people move crypto assets between blockchains. > The bridge was supposed to verify that transactions were legitimate before releasing or creating assets on another network. > But a flaw in its Solana-side verification system allowed the attacker to bypass a critical security check. > Instead of proving that the required assets were locked on another blockchain, the attacker tricked the system into accepting forged verification data. > Wormhole then minted 120,000 wrapped ETH on Solana without the equivalent ETH being deposited to back it. > The haul was worth roughly $326 MILLION at the time. > The attacker moved 93,750 $ETH to Ethereum, worth around $250 MILLION, while the remaining wrapped ETH stayed on Solana. > Wormhole shut down the bridge as its team scrambled to patch the vulnerability. > The team even offered the attacker a $10 MILLION bounty to return the funds and explain the exploit. > The attacker never returned the money. Instead, Jump Crypto stepped in and supplied 120,000 ETH to restore the bridge’s backing. > A few months later, Wormhole paid another $10 MILLION bounty but this time to a white-hat researcher who discovered a separate critical vulnerability before it could be exploited. > But the original attacker still had a large amount of the stolen ETH, which they had moved into DeFi protocols. > In February 2023, a white-hat group showed Oasis how the attacker's position could be taken over, and the team received a court order to retrieve the assets. > What followed was a counter-exploit that took control of the attacker's DeFi position and recovered roughly $225 MILLION in collateral. > After accounting for the debt attached to those assets, the estimated net recovery was around $140 MILLION. > The attacker had stolen $326 MILLION from Wormhole. A year later, part of the money was recovered by turning the attacker's own position against them.