It appears that the intruder who once stole more than $320 million from the Wormhole bridge was initially eligible to receive a $50,000 airdrop from the Wormhole.

Initially, the attacker responsible for the notorious $320 million breach of the Wormhole bridge in 2022 was considered eligible to receive $50,000 in newly issued W tokens via an airdrop. 

Pseudonymous researcher Pland asserted in an April 4 post to X that the Wormhole team neglected to exclude a number of wallet addresses associated with an exploit that enabled thieves to steal $321 million in cryptocurrency from the cross-chain bridge in 2022.

The market proportion of Lido in Ethereum staking falls below 30%.

Degen News cited data from Airdrop.link, an airdrop verification tool based in Solana, in an April 4 post to X. The report indicates that four wallet addresses associated with the exploit were provisionally able to obtain Wormhole’s airdrop.

NEW: 4 WALLETS CONNECTED TO THE @wormhole EXPLOIT ARE ELIGIBLE FOR ~$52.7K WORTH OF $W CLAIM – PER @ZheSolworks AIRDROP CHECKER

H/T: @Pland__ pic.twitter.com/P7SFfzJPxS

— DEGEN NEWS 🗞️ (@DegenerateNews) April 4, 2024

Had the perpetrator chosen to claim their airdrops, they would have been entitled to an estimated 31,642 Wormhole (W) tokens, which are currently valued at approximately $50,000.

After conducting an independent verification of the wallet addresses on Airdrop.link, Cointelegraph discovered that they were no longer eligible. This suggests that the Wormhole team may have successfully closed the vulnerability.

Cointelegraph had not received a response from Wormhole at the time of publication (until contacted).

The 2022 Wormhole vulnerability was identified in all four of the eligible wallet addresses by the Solana block explorer, Solana.fm.

The FCA and Bank of England establish the Digital Securities Sandbox for DLT testing.

In February 2022, an enormous $321 million was stolen through the exploitation of the Wormhole Bridge, making it one of the most significant breaches in the crypto industry’s annals.

However, in February 2023, the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Oasis.app and Web3 infrastructure firm Jump Crypto executed a “counter exploit” against the Wormhole protocol intruder.

It's counterexploit szn 😱 pic.twitter.com/JMb4zEq1mR

— Spreek (@spreekaway) February 24, 2023

Subsequently, the two organizations recovered a cumulative sum of $225 million in digital assets from the wormhole exploiter and deposited them into secure purses.

On April 3, Wormhole declared that it would airdrop to eligible users in excess of 675 million of its new Wormhole (W) tokens, valued at approximately $850 million at current prices.

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