Hackers took advantage of a faulty Socket smart contract that was updated three days ago<\/p>\n
Socket, a cross-chain interoperability protocol, has resumed operations after suffering an exploit yesterday.<\/p>\n
The incident was\u00a0identified<\/a>\u00a0on Jan. 16 by PeckShield, a blockchain security firm, who tagged Socket in a tweet after spotting suspicious\u00a0transactions<\/a>\u00a0on-chain.<\/p>\n Socket\u00a0responded<\/a>\u00a040 minutes later, tweeting that it had paused all affected contracts after hackers compromised wallets allowing unlimited approvals to Socket\u2019s smart contracts. The project added that no user actions were required after the contracts were paused.<\/p>\n \u201cSocket is now operational again,\u201d the team later\u00a0tweeted<\/a>. \u201cThe affected contract has been paused and damage is fully contained. Bridging on Bungee Exchange and most of our partner front-ends has resumed.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The project said it will prioritize \u201cdoing right\u201d by its users and recovering the stolen assets. \u201cA detailed post-mortem and next steps will follow shortly,\u201d the team said.<\/p>\n Socket also urged users to be cautious of fake Socket accounts attempting to steal user funds via phishing scams.<\/p>\n PeckShield estimates $3.3M worth of user assets were lost amid the incident, attributing the exploit to error-laden transaction routing added to Socket\u2019s contracts three days prior.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hack is due to incomplete validation of user input, which is exploited to steal funds from users who have approved the vulnerable SocketGateway contract,\u201d PeckShield\u00a0tweeted<\/a>.<\/p>\n Socket is the latest cross-chain interoperability protocol to suffer an exploit, with bridges comprising sizable honeypots for opportunistic hackers.<\/p>\n According to Rekt, four of the five largest DeFi hacks resulted from attacks targeting bridges, with Ronin, Poly Network, BNB Bridge, and Wormhole losing more than\u00a0$2.1B<\/a>\u00a0in assets combined.<\/p>\n Last month, the cross-chain bridges\u00a0Orbit<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Aurory<\/a>\u00a0both suffered exploits, with Orbit losing more than $81M.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n