Hacker magics $300M worth of crypto out of thin air in fourth largest blockchain heist ever

pcgamer.com:

A large-scale crypto heist that occurred last night could be the fourth largest of all time. A cryptocurrency portal, Wormhole, has been hacked and funds stolen valued at $300–330 million. Confirming the hack yesterday, Wormhole has since patched the exploit in its system which allowed hackers to steal nearly 120,000 wETH, a 1:1 exchangeable token with the Ethereum network's ether.

Wormhole is a cryptocurrency network, or bridge, that allows users to transfer cryptocurrency between various blockchains, including the Ethereum and Solana networks. It essentially works by holding a user's tokens in a smart contract on the departing chain, and then minting a wormhole 'wrapped' token on the destination chain. These wrapped tokens can then be swapped for native tokens on the destination chain, effectively swapping crypto between major chains.

Now, somewhere in that process of minting and wrapping there was an exploit, one which has allowed a hacker to mint wrapped coins on a network that they didn't have to transfer, in this case 120,000 wETH on the Solana network, which uses the cryptocurrency SOL.

The 120,000 figure has since been confirmed by Wormhole directly, which values the entire operation at somewhere around $320 million, depending on the exact price at that time.

The funds have since been divided and exchanged. Most appears to have been swapped for ether, around 93,750, while a lesser sum is held in SOL.

The wormhole network was exploited for 120k wETH. ETH will be added over the next hours to ensure wETH is backed 1:1. More details to come shortly.We are working to get the network back up quickly. Thanks for your patience.February 2, 2022

One of the key things with this hack is that wormhole must maintain a 1:1