A series of swift security breaches struck the decentralized finance sector, with over $31.6 million stolen from two separate crosschain bridge hacks within just a few hours. The incidents affected decentralized perpetual exchange AFX and Verus Protocol, underscoring persistent vulnerabilities in the infrastructure connecting different blockchains.
AFX suffers major bridge exploit
Blockaid, a blockchain security firm, reported that AFX, which operates as a decentralized perpetual exchange on Arbitrum, experienced a significant breach on Wednesday. Attackers exploited one of AFX’s crosschain bridges, leading to losses that reached $24.15 million.
The exploit reportedly occurred at around 9:30 pm UTC. Stephen Goldfeder, co-founder of Offchain Labs, confirmed that a third-party protocol bridge faced an unauthorized withdrawal, but emphasized that the Arbitrum native bridge itself remained secure. He stated that his team had begun an investigation and reassured users there was no breach on the main Arbitrum infrastructure.
Goldfeder indicated that the impacted transaction came from an external protocol, and stressed, “the Arbitrum native bridge has not been hacked or exploited in any way.”
SunSec, founder of the Web3 security group DeFiHackLabs and a SEAL contributor, analyzed the hack and explained that the breach appeared to stem from compromised keys rather than vulnerabilities in the smart contract code.
The incident reignited conversation within the crypto community regarding the inherent risks of crosschain bridges. Onchain investigator TheCrypticWolf commented that bridges would continue to represent a critical security weak point unless fundamental improvements are made.
Verus Protocol bridge targeted
Within hours of the AFX attack, Blockaid identified a similar exploit on the Verus Ethereum Bridge. The event resulted in the theft of $7.5 million worth of digital assets, including Ether, tBTC (a Bitcoin-backed ERC-20 token), USDC, USDt, EURC, MKR, and scrvUSD, which were siphoned out of bridge reserves.
This latest breach closely resembled a previous attack on the same Verus Ethereum Bridge in May, which drained $11.58 million, as attackers utilized the same underlying method but used a different wallet to carry out the exploit.
Blockaid explained that the attacker “used the bridge import path to trigger unbacked Ethereum-side payouts,” mirroring the tactics seen in the earlier incident.
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The frequency and scale of these bridge exploits highlight the ongoing security challenges in decentralized finance. As bridges continue to be integral for moving assets across blockchains, many in the industry stress the need for enhanced security measures to reduce the risk of future attacks.
