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Polkadot linked Hyperbridge exploit losses jump to $2.5 million

Polkadot linked Hyperbridge exploit losses jump to $2.5 million

The team said the April 13 Token Gateway exploit was far more severe than first disclosed, with losses revised to about $2.5 million after a fuller forensic review.

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by Estefano Gomez

Hyperbridge said the April 13 exploit of its Token Gateway was about 10 times worse than first reported, raising its estimate of realized losses to roughly $2.5 million after initially putting the figure near $237,000.

The team said the revised number came after reconciling attacker activity across four chains, accounting for the exploit’s two phase structure, and including losses tied to associated incentive pools.

The update marks a sharp revision from the project’s first public assessment, which focused on the immediately visible sell off of bridged DOT on Ethereum. Hyperbridge now says the attacker first extracted roughly 245 ETH from Token Gateway, then moved into a second phase in which about 1 billion bridged DOT tokens were minted without authorization and dumped into available decentralized exchange liquidity.

The exploit centered on a vulnerability in the Merkle Mountain Range, or MMR, proof verification logic used by Hyperbridge’s HandlerV1 path. Security researchers and incident writeups said the flaw let an attacker forge a cross chain style message, gain control over admin functions tied to the bridged DOT token contract, and mint a massive amount of fake bridged DOT on Ethereum before selling into limited liquidity.

Hyperbridge said the damage was isolated to Token Gateway and affected bridged token contracts on Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, and Arbitrum. The team said native DOT on Polkadot, as well as Intent Gateway and related products built on top of it, were not affected.

Polkadot separately said the issue was limited to DOT bridged to Ethereum through Hyperbridge and did not affect native DOT in the broader Polkadot ecosystem.

The project said a significant portion of the exploited funds has been traced on chain to Binance and that it is working with the exchange’s compliance team and law enforcement on freezing and recovery efforts. If those efforts fail to make users whole, Hyperbridge said it plans to allocate BRIDGE tokens to cover residual losses, though it said it would wait before detailing that mechanism in order to avoid undermining recovery efforts and token value.

All bridging through Token Gateway remains paused while the team finalizes a patch, independent audit, and added safeguards. Hyperbridge said operations will not resume until the underlying vulnerability is fully addressed and the audit report is made public.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
DEFI

Polkadot linked Hyperbridge exploit losses jump to $2.5 million

Polkadot linked Hyperbridge exploit losses jump to $2.5 million

The team said the April 13 Token Gateway exploit was far more severe than first disclosed, with losses revised to about $2.5 million after a fuller forensic review.

by Estefano Gomez

Share

Add us on Google

Hyperbridge said the April 13 exploit of its Token Gateway was about 10 times worse than first reported, raising its estimate of realized losses to roughly $2.5 million after initially putting the figure near $237,000.

The team said the revised number came after reconciling attacker activity across four chains, accounting for the exploit’s two phase structure, and including losses tied to associated incentive pools.

The update marks a sharp revision from the project’s first public assessment, which focused on the immediately visible sell off of bridged DOT on Ethereum. Hyperbridge now says the attacker first extracted roughly 245 ETH from Token Gateway, then moved into a second phase in which about 1 billion bridged DOT tokens were minted without authorization and dumped into available decentralized exchange liquidity.

The exploit centered on a vulnerability in the Merkle Mountain Range, or MMR, proof verification logic used by Hyperbridge’s HandlerV1 path. Security researchers and incident writeups said the flaw let an attacker forge a cross chain style message, gain control over admin functions tied to the bridged DOT token contract, and mint a massive amount of fake bridged DOT on Ethereum before selling into limited liquidity.

Hyperbridge said the damage was isolated to Token Gateway and affected bridged token contracts on Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, and Arbitrum. The team said native DOT on Polkadot, as well as Intent Gateway and related products built on top of it, were not affected.

Polkadot separately said the issue was limited to DOT bridged to Ethereum through Hyperbridge and did not affect native DOT in the broader Polkadot ecosystem.

The project said a significant portion of the exploited funds has been traced on chain to Binance and that it is working with the exchange’s compliance team and law enforcement on freezing and recovery efforts. If those efforts fail to make users whole, Hyperbridge said it plans to allocate BRIDGE tokens to cover residual losses, though it said it would wait before detailing that mechanism in order to avoid undermining recovery efforts and token value.

All bridging through Token Gateway remains paused while the team finalizes a patch, independent audit, and added safeguards. Hyperbridge said operations will not resume until the underlying vulnerability is fully addressed and the audit report is made public.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.