Crypto caper results in approximately $300 million stolen, bug bounty offered to perpetrator

What you need to know

• Wormhole, a cryptocurrency portal, admitted it had been robbed of 120,000 wETH.
• That figure translates to roughly $320 million in value.
• The hacker has been contacted with an offer of $10 million in bug bounty compensation if they return the $320 million.

The potential dangers of cryptocurrency are once again on display, as cryptocurrency portal Wormhole just admitted it got robbed of 120,000 wETH, which translates to somewhere in the neighborhood of $320 million.

As reported by Elliptic and confirmed by Wormhole itself, the blockchain bridge has found itself out of a substantial amount of cryptocurrency tokens thanks to someone exploiting its system to snag a massive chunk of virtual change (via PC Gamer).

According to analysis from @samczsun on Twitter, the attacker's play was possible thanks to Wormhole failing to properly validate input accounts, leading to spoofed guardian signatures successfully enabling the minting of 120,000 wETH.

Elliptic claims the theft's immense size makes it the fourth-largest cryptocurrency heist of all time. With the added qualifier of "biggest heists for a DeFi service," this score takes second place in the all-time records.

"All funds have been restored and Wormhole is back up," Wormhole said in a recent tweet thread, confirming the vulnerability has been patched. "The team is working on a detailed incident report and will share it asap."

Elliptic's report indicates that Wormhole offered the hacker "$10 million for exploit details, and returning the wETH."

With this case in mind, it's also worth noting that cryptocurrency is, slowly but surely, making its way into more normal day-to-day life operations. AMC has shown a fondness for crypto, as has El Salvador, which is building a literal Bitcoin City. If you're not afraid of the risks, consider learning how to mine crypto.