An announcement by Oasis Network on February 24 stated (1) that the platform for decentralized finance (DeFi) had worked with white hat hackers to retrieve assets stolen through Solana’s Wormhole bridge.
The cryptocurrency exchange known as Wormhole was hacked on February 2, and it was believed that approximately $326 million worth of digital money was taken. The hacker later transferred some of these monies to their accounts.
Wormhole is the network that establishes connections between Solana and other key decentralized financial infrastructure (DeFi) networks. Because of Solana’s lightning-fast transaction speeds and low transaction fees, tokenized assets may be moved from one blockchain to another without causing any disruption to active projects, platforms, or communities.
Over the past few weeks, the exploiter of the Wormhole Network has been extremely active. As per PeckShield, the hacker who disseminated stolen assets totaling $150 million on January 12 has redistributed additional monies since then.
Hackers With Good Intentions To The Rescue
The developer of the multi-signature wallet software, Oasis, disclosed in a blog post that whitehat hackers had just informed them of “a completely undiscovered weak spot in the layout of the admin multisig access.”
Before committing the crime, the hacker had placed funds into the multi-signature wallet software.
Now, in response to a judgment handed down on February 21 by the High Court of England and Wales, it has taken advantage of this defect to retrieve the funds.
Oasis decided to work with a group of ethical hackers known as “white hats” to accomplish this goal. On February 16, this organization proposed a strategy for recovering the stolen funds.
Tuesday was the day the two organizations put the plan into effect and handed over the recovered assets to a third party to who the court had granted permission.
According to what is said in the release, “We can also confirm the assets were instantly transmitted onto a wallet held by the permitted third party,” which was a requirement of the court order.
Oasis Network mentioned in the blog post that they do not have any access or control over these assets.
Who are ‘White Hat’ Hackers?
When it comes to the safety of computer networks, the best people to contact are “white hat” hackers. Hackers who wear the proverbial equivalent of white hats actively look for and report security vulnerabilities to close those holes in software or hardware before they are exploited in malicious attacks.
Hackers with hostile intentions are the ones that aim to disrupt systems, steal information, or damage systems. These hackers are frequently called “black hats,” another name.
Although Oasis would not disclose the name of the white hat hacker organization, Blockworks stated that the Web3 infrastructure business Jump Crypto might be the one responsible for the recovery effort.
In addition, the report revealed that after accounting for costs, a total of assets worth 140 million dollars had been recovered.
In the meantime, the project maintained that user funds had never been in danger and could patch any vulnerabilities revealed to them.
Using a dubious method to recover stolen money may be contentious, and it may be questioned by proponents of decentralization who claim that blockchain technology ought to give individuals total authority over their assets.
