Hackers or hackers have stolen more than USD 320 million of cryptocurrency
from the crypto decentralized financial platform, Wormhole.
This case is the fourth largest crypto theft on record and the latest to
shake up the DeFi sector which is currently growing very fast.
Reporting from Channel News Asia, Friday (4/2/2022), Wormhole, a site that
allows the transfer of information from one crypto network to another, said
on Twitter on Wednesday that 120,000 units were hacked, the second largest
cryptocurrency, Ethereum.
London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said that attackers could
fraudulently create Wrapped ETH (wETH) tokens, nearly 94,000 of which were
then transferred to the Ethereum blockchain, driving transactions for Ether.
Wormhole said in another tweet on Thursday morning it had fixed the
vulnerability in its system but was still working to get the network back.
The DeFi platform allows users to lend, borrow and store typically in
cryptocurrencies bypassing traditional financial gateways such as banks.
Fraud and theft on the DeFi platform surpassed $10 billion last year. A
study showed Thursday, revealing risks in the fast-growing but largely
unregulated area of cryptocurrencies.
Hacking has long plagued crypto platforms. In 2018, approximately USD 530
million worth of digital tokens were stolen from the Tokyo-based platform
Coincheck. Another Japanese exchange, Mt Gox, collapsed in 2014 after
hackers stole half a billion dollars in crypto.
