Being a web3 hacker might be a full-time career move in 2022.

Network Wormhole Bridge was attacked for $320M in Feb.

Ronin Bridge was attacked for $625M in March.

Horizon Bridge was attacked for $100M in June.

Now the Nomad Bridge was attacked for $200M.

See any patterns there?

Some of the wildest, biggest, scariest crypto hacks in history are all on these “bridges”.

“According to the Rekt database, $1.2 billion in crypto assets were stolen in Q1 2022, representing 35.8% of all-time stolen funds according to the same source.

Interestingly, at least 80% of the lost assets in 2022 have been stolen from bridges.”

So what are these bridges for?

Why do we need them?

Bridges exists because we need to transfer assets from one chain to another.

As the big daddy Ethereum grows older, transactions are much slower and gas fees are more expensive.

New chains like Solana, Avalanche and Polygon emerged and attracted more users and money into the ecosystem.

In any healthy ecosystem, users want to transfer assets between chains easily.

That is where bridges come in.

Bridges are necessary for users to move assets from one chain to another easily.

Does it mean bridges are super unsafe and prone to hackers?

Well sort of.

“Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, believes cross-chain bridges are inherently prone to security breaches.”

Like bridges in the real world, they connect land masses, facilitate cargo, troops, goods between places and have huge value to the overall health of ecosystems.

Similarly in the crypto world, these bridges facilitate assets transfer between protocols and holds a lot of value and liquidity.

They typically don’t have a very robust and well developed security team.

Bridges expose a larger surface area to hackers and are just not as robustly built and carefully secured as the blockchains they facilitate.

So how did Nomad suddenly lose $200M?

The group hacked the crypto bridge Nomad to the tune of $200 million.

The hack was carried out by exploiting a vulnerability in the software that controls the bridge.

The details of the exploit have not been made public, but it is known that the hackers were able to gain access to the private keys that control the bridge’s operations.

This allowed them to issue illegitimate transactions that drained the bridge’s reserves.

The hack has caused a major disruption to the crypto markets, as Nomad was one of the largest bridges connecting different exchanges.

What is really crazy is that once people discovered that ANYONE can replicate the process and withdraw money from the bridge, it was an all out frenzy.

The Nomad Bridge hack was literally a free-for-all rampage done to some extent, by normal users.

“Unlike some bridge attacks, where a single culprit is behind the entire exploit, the Nomad attack was a free for all.”

“… [Y]ou didn’t need to know about Solidity or Merkle Trees or anything like that. All you had to do was find a transaction that worked, find/replace the other person’s address with yours, and then re-broadcast it,” @samczsun explained.

Hacks are always shocking to read about simply because they seemed so unreal.

But people did lose money and security was breached.

I do hope all these just makes crypto stronger over time and that we will one day have the edge over hackers.

Because if there is one thing I am certain, it is that as the crypto world gets larger and more glorious, so will the hacks too.

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Will crypto hacks just get bigger and scarier each time?

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#startups #business #startupx #growth #success #socialmedia #culture #web3 #strategy #hacks #ronin #horizon #harmony #nomad #bridges #eth #btc #crypto #hackers #evil

Being a web3 hacker might be a full-time career move in 2022.

Network Wormhole Bridge was attacked for $320M in Feb.

Ronin Bridge was attacked for $625M in March.

Horizon Bridge was attacked for $100M in June.

Now the Nomad Bridge was attacked for $200M.

See any patterns there?

Some of the wildest, biggest, scariest crypto hacks in history are all on these “bridges”.

“According to the Rekt database, $1.2 billion in crypto assets were stolen in Q1 2022, representing 35.8% of all-time stolen funds according to the same source.

Interestingly, at least 80% of the lost assets in 2022 have been stolen from bridges.”

So what are these bridges for?

Why do we need them?

Bridges exists because we need to transfer assets from one chain to another.

As the big daddy Ethereum grows older, transactions are much slower and gas fees are more expensive.

New chains like Solana, Avalanche and Polygon emerged and attracted more users and money into the ecosystem.

In any healthy ecosystem, users want to transfer assets between chains easily.

That is where bridges come in.

Bridges are necessary for users to move assets from one chain to another easily.

Does it mean bridges are super unsafe and prone to hackers?

Well sort of.

“Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, believes cross-chain bridges are inherently prone to security breaches.”

Like bridges in the real world, they connect land masses, facilitate cargo, troops, goods between places and have huge value to the overall health of ecosystems.

Similarly in the crypto world, these bridges facilitate assets transfer between protocols and holds a lot of value and liquidity.

They typically don’t have a very robust and well developed security team.

Bridges expose a larger surface area to hackers and are just not as robustly built and carefully secured as the blockchains they facilitate.

So how did Nomad suddenly lose $200M?

The group hacked the crypto bridge Nomad to the tune of $200 million.

The hack was carried out by exploiting a vulnerability in the software that controls the bridge.

The details of the exploit have not been made public, but it is known that the hackers were able to gain access to the private keys that control the bridge’s operations.

This allowed them to issue illegitimate transactions that drained the bridge’s reserves.

The hack has caused a major disruption to the crypto markets, as Nomad was one of the largest bridges connecting different exchanges.

What is really crazy is that once people discovered that ANYONE can replicate the process and withdraw money from the bridge, it was an all out frenzy.

The Nomad Bridge hack was literally a free-for-all rampage done to some extent, by normal users.

“Unlike some bridge attacks, where a single culprit is behind the entire exploit, the Nomad attack was a free for all.”

“… [Y]ou didn’t need to know about Solidity or Merkle Trees or anything like that. All you had to do was find a transaction that worked, find/replace the other person’s address with yours, and then re-broadcast it,” @samczsun explained.

Hacks are always shocking to read about simply because they seemed so unreal.

But people did lose money and security was breached.

I do hope all these just makes crypto stronger over time and that we will one day have the edge over hackers.

Because if there is one thing I am certain, it is that as the crypto world gets larger and more glorious, so will the hacks too.

-

Will crypto hacks just get bigger and scarier each time?

-

#startups #business #startupx #growth #success #socialmedia #culture #web3 #strategy #hacks #ronin #horizon #harmony #nomad #bridges #eth #btc #crypto #hackers #evil