The hacker responsible for the Wormhole bridge attack still hasn’t stopped making moves. After stealing $321 million, the Wormhole hacker has now shifted approximately $151 million to a decentralized exchange (DEX). The attack can be regarded as the third greatest crypto-related exploit in 2022 and resulted in the theft of nearly 120,000 wETH worth $321 million. However, the address associated with the exploit witnessed an eruption in the on-chain activity over the span of a few months.
As per a tweet, approximately 95,630 ETH were shifted to the OpenOcean DEX. This transfer was done before the token was converted to multiple ETH-pegged assets. Some of them include stETH and wETH. Furthermore, the Wormhole bridge hacker later on used wrapped stake Ether, wstETH, as collateral in order to obtain a loan worth $13 million. The loan was taken in the DAI stablecoin to buy approximately 7989.5 ETH. These trades were carried out a considerable number of times.
We are seeing address 0x629e… Wormhole Network Exploiter swap 95,630 Ether (~$155M) to stETH
Stay safe! pic.twitter.com/ZR6zxlRuKX
— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) January 23, 2023
Considering how the on-chain activity suddenly spiked, the Wormhole team came forward and made an offer to the hacker. The team stated that it would reiterate its previous offer of $10 million.
The Wormhole Fiasco Continues
Keeping in mind how the Wormhole hacker pushed a staggering transaction, the price of stETH was also affected. Previously, the price of the asset went from almost 0.9962 ETH to a high of 1.0002 ETH. However, stETH did not stay at that price point for an extended time as it soon dipped back to 0.9981 ETH soon after.
The Wormhole exploit has yet again become a hot topic in the crypto community as a result of recent events. A few cybersecurity firms have warned about searching Wormhole Bridge on Google. Whenever searched, the results would show a considerable number of promoted advertisement websites. In reality, these websites are active phishing operations. It is necessary to keep in mind that the rates of cyber-attacks have grown considerably over the previous years. Fearing that their funds might be stolen, many crypto investors have now shifted to self-custody.
