Hackers Drain $82M From Orbit Chain Using Its Bridge’s Vulnerability

Orbit Chain, a cross-chain project, recently experienced a security breach resulting in the threat actors carting away approximately $82 million.

Despite initial identification by blockchain security platform PeckShield and a subsequent tweet notifying the Orbit Chain team, an official announcement from the protocol’s core team about the cause of the attack is still pending.

Security Vulnerability in the Crypto Bridge

The security vulnerability revolves around the bridge that facilitates the movement of crypto assets on and off the Orbit Chain. This bridge supports cryptocurrencies from more than 15 public blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Ripple, and others.

Based on on-chain data shared by user Kgjr, the attacker successfully transferred 30 million USDT, 10 million DAI, and 231 wrapped BTC into their wallet address. Additionally, 9,500 ETH, valued at $21.5 million, was compromised.

This incident adds to the growing list of decentralized finance (DeFi) projects falling victim to malicious activities. In November, Heco Bridge, another cross-chain protocol, suffered an $86.6 million attack, later labeled a potential rug pull by PeckShield. The decentralized exchange KyberSwap also faced a significant loss of about $50 million during the same month.

Impact on ORC and Orbit Chain’s TVL

Following the security breach, Orbit Chain’s native cryptocurrency, ORC, experienced a decline. As of the latest update, ORC is trading at $0.0685, marking a 5% decrease in the past 24 hours and a substantial 99.26% drop from its all-time high of $9.51 in April 2021.

Despite the attack, Orbit Chain’s total value locked (TVL), as reported by the blockchain analytics platform DeFiLlama, remains unaffected at $151.9 million.

In other news, to prevent such attacks from happening on Solana, developers are on the constant lookout for vulnerability.