Crypto Hacker Mints $1.1 Billion in Polkadot via Ethereum Bridge, But Can Only Cash Out $237K

Decrypt04-13 16:09

In brief A vulnerability on Hyperbridge led to the loss of around $237,000 of bridged Polkadot (DOT) on Ethereum. A hacker gained access to the bridged DOT token contract, allowing them to mint 1 ...

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The malicious actor has not yet been identified. “This flaw allowed invalid proofs to be incorrectly accepted as valid,” Hyperbridge posted on X. “As a result, a malicious message was processed that granted the attacker administrative control of the bridged DOT token contract on Ethereum.” Once the exploiter gained access to the bridged DOT token contract, they proceeded to mint 1 billion bridged DOT tokens—which exceeded the actual bridged DOT token supply by around 2,800 times. For reference, the total native, non-bridged DOT supply is only 1.6 billion tokens.\nThis incident was isolated to only bridged DOT on Ethereum. Hence, native DOT on the Polkadot relay chain, parachains, and other assets across Hyperbridge remain completely secure and unaffected.\n— Hyperbridge (@hyperbridge) April 13, 2026The firm and the team behind the Polkadot blockchain confirmed the exploit was confined to only bridged DOT on the Ethereum blockchain.After minting the tokens, the attacker then sold them directly on decentralized exchanges, making away with around $237,000—the amount that was available in trading liquidity.Should there have been sufficient liquidity, someone with around 1 billion DOT tokens could stand to gain more than $1 billion as the token trades around $1.17, down 4.6% in the last 24 hours.At that mark, DOT has now fallen more than 68% in the last year of trading and is nearly 98% off its November 2021 all-time high of $54.98. DOT is currently just above its all-time low price of $1.15, set in February.The protocol’s app is down for maintenance as it adds “additional safeguards” and works with security partners in an attempt to recover swiped funds. Bridge protocols have been at the center of multiple exploits over the years, highlighted by Ronin Network’s $552 million exploit in 2022 when hackers attacked its native bridge to Ethereum. The exploit remains one of the largest crypto hacks of all-time, and was linked by U.S. government agencies to North Korea’s infamous state-sponsored Lazarus hacking group.The latest exploit adds to a mounting list of concerns surrounding the security of DeFi protocols, following the recent exploit of Solana’s Drift Protocol, which lost more than $285 million on April 1 to a North Korean-linked hacker.Daily Debrief NewsletterStart every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.Your EmailGet it!Get it!","kind":"highlight","is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":false,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":null,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"-1","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"isVideo":false,"video":null,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":0,"need_auth":false,"code":"91000000","status":"200"},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"newsSizeData":{"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false},"APP":{"userAgent":"Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)","isDev":false,"isTTM":true,"tenantId":"TBGLOBAL","deviceId":"web-server-community-laohu8-v3","version":"4.40.0","shortVersion":"4.40.0","platform":"web","vendor":"web","appName":"ttm","isIOS":false,"isAndroid":false,"isTiger":false,"isTHS":false,"isWeiXin":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"isWeiBo":false,"isQQ":false,"isBaiduSwan":false,"isBaiduBox":false,"isDingTalk":false,"isToutiao":false,"isOnePlus":false,"isHuaWei":false,"isXiaomi":false,"isXiaomiWebView":false,"isOppo":false,"isVivo":false,"isSamsung":false,"isMobile":false},"href":"/m/news/2627845250","isCrawlerRequest":true}