All incidents · Feb 2, 2022
120,000 unbacked wETH was minted on Wormhole
WormholeBridgeResolvedSolana, Ethereum
On February 2, 2022, an attacker used a signature-verification flaw in Wormhole. On Solana, the attacker minted 120,000 wETH that was not backed by an Ethereum deposit, and moved part of it back to Ethereum. The next day Jump Crypto put in 120,000 ETH. The bridge recovered that afternoon.
- Reimbursed
- 320million USD
- The 120,000 ETH Jump Crypto put back, on the same dollar basis · as of Feb 3, 2022
Sequence
Newest first · UTC
Feb 32022 · Thu
Jump said in public that it had put in 120,000 ETH so community members would not take the loss
Statement · Jump Crypto · @JumpCryptoHQ
Ars Technica cited Jump Crypto's post that day. The company called Wormhole multi-chain infrastructure. It said the top-up was so community members would be made whole, and so it could keep supporting Wormhole at the same time. The report puts Jump's public confirmation that it supplied the coins at 18:13 UTC.
That's why we replaced 120k ETH to make community members whole and support Wormhole now as it continues to develop.
The network and the Portal bridge came back
Confirmation · Wormhole
The report says the network and the Portal bridge came back online at 13:29 UTC. From the stop of message forwarding to recovery, the report gives about 16 hours in total. At 13:39 UTC the official account posted to notify the community.
Jump Crypto put 120,000 ETH into the contract
Reimbursement · Jump Crypto
The after-action report marks 13:08 UTC as the moment Jump Crypto topped up the contract and restored full collateral. What was added was 120,000 ETH. It was not the attacker returning the original funds. The dollar figure follows the reporting basis of about $320 million at the time of the incident. It is not repriced as of the day of the top-up.
Feb 22022 · Wed
An on-chain message offered $10 million for the details and the funds
Industry · Wormhole
Ars Technica recorded an Ethereum transaction note sent to the attacker's address. In it, the Wormhole deployer offered a white-hat agreement. The offer was $10 million if the exploit details were explained and the minted wETH was returned. The funds were not returned on those terms.
We noticed you were able to exploit the Solana VAA verification and mint tokens. We'd like to offer you a whitehat agreement, and present you a bug bounty of $10 million for exploit details, and returning the wETH you've minted.
120,000 wETH was minted with no deposit behind it
Technical · Wormhole
Wormhole's after-action report says the attacker used a signature-verification flaw in the network. On Solana, the attacker minted 120,000 Wormhole-wrapped ether. These tokens had no matching deposit on the Portal bridge on the Ethereum side. The attacker then bridged 93,750 of them back to Ethereum and withdrew them. TechCrunch, citing an official post, wrote the 120,000 wETH as about $320 million.
The wormhole network was exploited for 120k wETH.