First Major Theft of 2024: Orbit Chain's Cross-Chain Bridge Hacked, $81.5 Million Lost

On January 1st, 2024, user @KGJRTG on the X platform discovered a hacker attack on Orbit Chain's cross-chain bridge, resulting in a loss of $81.5 million in

cryptocurrency

and stablecoins. The specific nature of this hacking incident remains unclear.

In five separate transactions, each transaction was sent to a new wallet. Orbit Bridge sent $50 million in stablecoins (30 million Tether, 10 million DAI, and 10 million USDC), 231 wBTC coins (approximately $10 million), and 9,500 ETH (approximately $21.5 million).

It appears that Orbit Bridge has close ties to the Klaytn ecosystem. According to Klaytn Explore, the top 10 tokens by market value on the Klaytn chain are all wrapped by Orbit. It's indicated that the stolen native assets originated from the Ethereum chain.

Orbit Chain has issued an update regarding the security incident on the X platform: Unidentified access to Orbit Bridge was confirmed to have occurred on December 31, 2023, at 08:52:47 PM (UTC time). Further information about this issue will be updated in due course. The official team is currently conducting a comprehensive analysis with Theori to ascertain the root cause of this problem and is actively collaborating with international law enforcement agencies.

Simultaneously, the official statement warns against any circulating claims of compensation, emphasizing that these are scams. They advise against interacting with such claims. The latest updates will be provided through the @Orbit_Chain account.

Currently, Orbit Chain is tracing the destination of the stolen funds and has requested major global

cryptocurrency exchanges

to freeze the stolen assets.

According to SlowMist, preliminary analysis suggests that the Orbit Bridge incident wasn't a direct theft of private keys but is more inclined towards a vulnerability in the bridge or issues related to centralized servers.