The exploiters swapped 95,630 ETH with staked ETH (stETH).
The Wormhole deployer offered a $10 million bounty to the attacker.
The wormhole bridge exploiters are back in action. While tracking down the so-called wallet address of the hacker, a brief amount of Ethereum was transferred on 23rd Jan of 2022.
Wormhole Network Exploiters Transactions (Source: Etherscan)
Two interesting transactions on the list, one is presumably between exploiter and exploiter 2, which sums around 1,889 ETH with approx $3 million. And the next one is a swap of 95,630 ETH with staked ETH (stETH) between the exploit and OpenOcean exchange. The swap’s value is $156,674,308. The stETH was further converted to wrapped staked ETH (wstETH/wETH).
Wormhole Exploit History
On 2nd Feb 2022, an attacker took advantage of the security loop in the DeFi platform, Wormhole. And the platform lost wETH worth around $326 million. The hack was the 3 biggest crypto theft in the year 2022.
Post the hack, the wormhole deployer also offered a $10 million bounty to the attacker for returning the stolen wETH. And that offer is now reopening. Which is resulting to be a one-sided conversion before and now as well.
Coming to the current transactions, the wstETH are collaterals for gaining DAI stablecoins worth $13 million. And the usage of the stablecoin remains a mystery. Hacks and hackers are one factor that traumatic the virtual and digital asset users.
Though in recent times, the crypto market can witness many crypto-related hacks being in the spotlight by national and international government investing agencies. More strict regulations and implications can only resolve the scenario.