- More than $320 million worth of tokens stolen.
- Hack is the fourth largest crypto theft ever.
- DeFi sites are increasingly targeted by criminals.
Hackers have stolen cryptocurrency worth more than $320 million from a decentralized financing platform, the fourth largest crypto heist ever and the latest to shake up the burgeoning DeFi sector.
Wormhole, a site that allows the transfer of information from one crypto network to another, said on Twitter on Wednesday that it was being “exploited” for 120,000 units of a version of the second-largest cryptocurrency, ether.
Wormhole did not immediately respond to a request from Reuters for comment.
London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said attackers were able to fraudulently create the wETH tokens Elleptic, nearly 94,000 of which were later transferred to the ethereal blockchain, which enables transactions for ether.
Wormhole said in another tweet Thursday asked that it had fixed the vulnerability in its system, but was still working to get the network back up to date.
So-called DeFi platforms allow users to borrow, lend and save – mostly in cryptocurrencies – while bypassing traditional gatekeepers of finance such as banks.
Cash has been pouring into DeFi sites, reflecting the explosion of interest in cryptocurrencies as a whole. Many investors, faced with historically low or sub-zero interest rates, are drawn to DeFi by its promise of high returns on savings.
But with their rapid growth, DeFi platforms have emerged as a major hacking risk, with code bugs and design flaws allowing criminals to target DeFi sites and deep pools of liquidity, as well as launder the proceeds of crime, while they leave few traces.
Fraud and theft on DeFi platforms exceeded $10 billion last year, research showed Thursday, exposing the risks in the burgeoning but mostly unregulated field of cryptocurrencies.
Back in August, hackers behind what may be the largest digital coin heist ever returned nearly all of the $610 million they stole from the DeFi site Poly Network.
Hacks have long plagued crypto platforms. In 2018, digital tokens worth about $530 million were stolen from Tokyo-based platform Coincheck Mt Gox, another Japanese exchange, which collapsed in 2014 after hackers stole half a billion dollars’ worth of crypto.
