After exploiting a security flaw in the Wormhole Bridge, located in Solana, the attacker was able to hack it for $325 million. This is one of the most significant crypto-related exploits.
One year later, two crypto-firms and a group made up of white hats launched a “counterexploit” against the malign entities. They also recovered a portion the stolen assets.
“Counter Exploit”
Jump Crypto and Oasis, a decentralized finance platform, jointly carried out the counter-exploit. Wormhole’s parent firm, Jump Crypto, was responsible for resolving all funds that were lost. This vulnerability was also fixed.
Wormhole offered a $10million bug bounty and white-hat agreement to the attackers for the return of the funds. This never happened. The government and private resources were able to assist in the investigation. Now, fast forward to the 21st of February. Oasis Received An order from the High Court of England and Wales directing the High Court to take all steps necessary to recover assets associated with the wallet address that was exploited.
According to a ReportAfter a counter-exploit, assets worth $140 million were successfully recovered. The Oasis Multisig initiated the retrieval and funds were returned to an authorized court third party. Only the Oasis Multisig approved the counter exploit.
Reaction from the Community
The community survived the retrieval Remaining As the incident progressed, the community was divided. One user noted that the whole incident sets a poor precedent for the decentralized financial ecosystem. His Tweet read,
“W/r/t the Oasis/Wormhole Counter Exploit that I really didn’t think we’d see court-mandated smart contracts manipulation for at most a few years more. Bad precedent and condemnation for upgradable proxy.”
Oasis stressed, however that access was granted only to protect user assets in case of an attack. Oasis also stated that the platform was able to quickly address any vulnerabilities. Not a single user asset has ever been at risk of being accessed or hacked by unauthorized parties, either in the past nor present.