• Wormhole was attacked on February 2, 2022, and 120,000 ETH were stolen, worth $321 million. 
• The hacker first moved $155 million on January 24, 2023. 

Hackers can be considered modern-day dacoits, who loot money and assets in more sophisticated ways, not concentrated in an area or a road you can avoid. They have access to all your data and can strike anytime they want. The third largest crypto hack took place in 2022 on Wormhole, worth $321 million, and now the hackers have moved $46 million of the stolen funds. 

Wormhole hack in 2022

The ill victim of the third largest crypto hack in 2022 was Wormhole’s token bridge. Nearly $321 million of Wrapped Ethereum (wETH) were stolen. Per the latest data from a blockchain security firm Peckshield, the anonymous hacker associated with the wallet reactivated and shifted $46 million of crypto assets. 

The details that surfaced regarding the movement are 24.4 K wsETH, worth $41.4 million, and 3 K rETH, worth $5 million, were moved to MakerDAO for 16.6 million DAI, which was later used to buy 97.5 K ETH worth $1,537, and 1 K stETH worth $1,543 and wrapped them for 9.7 K of wstETH. 

Earlier, the hacker also moved 95,630 ETH worth nearly $155 million to OpenOcean DEX on January 24, 2023, which were later converted to some ETH-pegged assets like Lido’s stETH and wstETH. 

Top 10 crypto hacks of 2022

2022 was a bad year for the crypto industry as it not only saw major collapses like Terra Ecosystem collapse and FTX collapse, the crypto winter worsened their effects affecting everyone even remotely associated with the industry to a certain extent. Major hacks also amounted to a total of $2.1 billion.

First was the Ronin Bridge hack; on March 23, 2022, a hacker stole $612 million. It comprised 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDCs. Second was the infamous FTX wallet hack; during their bankruptcy filings on November 11,& 12, 2022, a series of unauthorized transactions took place on the exchange where $477 million were stolen. From both FTX.us and FTX.com.

Third, came the Wormhole bridge exploit, where on February 2, 2022, 120,000 ETH worth $321 million were stolen. Following on number four is the Nomad Token bridge exploit, where a smart contract vulnerability failed to properly validate the transactions, causing $190 million to be stolen on August 2, 2022. 

Fifth is Wintermute, the UK-based market maker, where a compromised hot wallet saw $160 million transferred across 70 tokens. Sixth was the BNB chain bridge exploit, where ‘irregular activities’ on the network, later found to be a hack, drained $100 million out. 

Seventh was the Harmony bridge hack, where North Korean cybercriminal syndicate Lazarus Group stole $100 million in multiple cryptocurrencies. Eighth was a DeFi protocol called Rari Fuse, which was stolen of $79.3 million by exploiting reentrancy vulnerability on April 30, 2022. 

Ninth was Qubit Finance bridge, a DeFi protocol on BNB smart chains, where $80 million worth of BNB tokens were stolen on January 28, 2022. And lastly, at the Tenth position comes a stablecoin protocol, Beanstalk Farm, which was duped at $76 million.

Though these hacks caused many troubles to associated people, but also highlighted the weak and blind spots in the system. These have been worked on by respective and soon better results can be expected.  

Andrew Smith

Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while pursuing his post-graduation major in blockchain development. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing, along with coding. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing skills, and a reliable craft at explaining the concepts such as blockchain programming, languages ​​and token minting. He also frequently shares technical details and performance indicators of ICOs and IDOs.