Another cryptocurrency firm has fallen victim to a major hack, losing millions of dollars in the process. Meter, a provider of decentralized finance (DeFi) infrastructure services, recently disclosed that an unauthorized intruder exploited a vulnerability in its cross-chain bridges to mint a large amount of Binance Coins (BNB) and wrapped Ethereum (WETH), depleting its reserves in the process.
Upon discovering the breach, Meter immediately halted all bridge transactions and launched an investigation to identify the source of the bug. The company revealed on Twitter that the hacker was able to manipulate the code to fake transfers of BNB and ETH by exploiting a trust assumption in the extended code. The incident only affected native gas tokens (WETH and BNB) on the Meter and Moonriver networks, resulting in a loss of $4.4 million for the firm.
Despite the financial setback, Meter pledged to compensate those impacted by the hack and vowed to collaborate with authorities to track down the perpetrator. The company advised liquidity providers involved in WETH and BNB trading to remove their assets from the pool and refrain from trading in those pairs until further notice.
While urging the hacker to return the stolen funds, Meter did not publicly offer a bug bounty reward for their safe return, unlike two other crypto firms that were recently compromised. Quibit Finance offered a $2 million reward to its attackers and promised not to press charges after losing $80 million, while Wormhole, another cross-chain bridge provider, lost an estimated $322 million and offered a staggering $10 million reward to the hacker.
In a show of support, Jump Trading replenished the funds lost by Wormhole to assist the community and aid in the platform’s continued development. These incidents serve as a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities present in the cryptocurrency industry and highlight the importance of implementing robust security measures to safeguard digital assets.