Back-to-Back Crypto Bridge Hacks Drain Over $31 Million in Seven Hours

Two separate crypto bridge hacks occurred within a span of just seven hours, resulting in a staggering loss of $31.6 million for decentralized perpetual exchange AFX and Verus Protocol.

The first hack targeted AFX's crosschain bridge on Arbitrum, with the perpetrators making off with approximately $24.15 million. The incident was detected by Blockaid at 9:30 pm UTC on Wednesday.

Just hours later, another exploit was discovered targeting the Verus Ethereum Bridge, draining around $7.5 million in various cryptocurrencies from bridge reserves. This attack appears to be similar to a previous incident in May that saw $11.58 million stolen using the same method but with a different attacker's wallet.

The back-to-back hacks highlight the ongoing security risks facing crosschain bridges, which hold significant amounts of assets and facilitate transactions between separate blockchains. According to onchain investigator TheCrypticWolf, 'another bridge, another exploit. Bridges will always be a weak link, until security is upgraded.'