O maior roubo bizarro do mundo das criptomoedas? Hackers criaram 1 bilhão de dólares em DOT, mas só roubaram 230 mil dólares

Hackers exploiting the Hyperbridge cross-chain bridge vulnerability have minted 1 billion DOT tokens out of thin air, with a face value of $1.19 billion, but due to severe market liquidity shortages, they ultimately cashed out only about $237,000.

Cryptocurrency attack incidents are becoming increasingly frequent, but cases like this—“taking big risks for small gains”—are quite rare. Earlier today (13th), hackers exploited a vulnerability in the Hyperbridge cross-chain bridge to mint 1 billion Polkadot (DOT) tokens on Ethereum, with a nominal value of up to $1.19 billion. However, when they tried to sell these tokens, the severe lack of liquidity meant they only received about $237,000 worth of ETH.

It should be clarified that the attack targeted the “cross-chain bridge smart contract,” so the native DOT tokens on the Polkadot mainnet were not affected. The main cause of this vulnerability was that Hyperbridge’s EthereumHost contract failed to properly verify the authenticity of messages before passing cross-chain information to the TokenGateway.

Image source: X/@OnchainLens

Cross-chain bridges have always been the most vulnerable link in blockchain architecture because they hold the management permissions of token contracts. Once the verification mechanism is compromised, hackers can easily gain the power to mint unlimited tokens.

Attack methods: forging messages, seizing management rights, unlimited minting

Blockchain tracking shows that the hacker submitted a forged message via dispatchIncoming, which successfully directed it to TokenGateway.onAccept. The system should have verified the authenticity of this message based on the status on the Polkadot chain, but the verification mechanism recorded the promise value as “all zeros,” meaning the verification process was completely bypassed or nonexistent. As a result, the system mistakenly treated this fake message as a legitimate command.

The accepted message immediately executed the changeAdmin function on the Polkadot token bridge contract, transferring admin rights to the attacker’s address. After gaining control, the attacker minted 1 billion DOT tokens in a single transaction, then used Odos Router V3 to deposit these tokens into the DOT-ETH liquidity pool on Uniswap V4. After multiple exchanges at slightly different prices, they finally withdrew about 108.2 ETH.

“Liquidity shortage” becomes a protective shield

In financial markets, “liquidity shortage” is usually a headache for large whales, but ironically, this time the liquidity shortage became an invisible shield, greatly limiting the hacker’s profit potential.

Because the liquidity depth of DOT on Ethereum is extremely limited, it cannot absorb the 1 billion tokens minted out of thin air. When the hacker hurried to sell for cash, severe slippage caused the actual price per token to fall below 1 cent.

In a bridge with deeper liquidity or higher-value assets, the same vulnerability could cause losses dozens of times greater. As of the time of writing, DOT’s trading price is about $1.17, down 5% in the past 24 hours.

This incident again illustrates that even if hackers have “unlimited minting rights,” whether they can successfully arbitrage ultimately depends on market liquidity and trading depth. The well-known blockchain security firm CertiK later confirmed the attack and stated that the hacker profited about $237,000 by minting and selling the bridge tokens.

As of now, Hyperbridge has not issued any public statement regarding the hacker incident.

Image source: X/@CertiKAlert

• This article is reprinted with permission from: “BlockCast”
• Original title: “The Worst Heist? Hacker Mints $1 Billion in $DOT, Only Steals $237K Due to ‘This Reason’”
• Original author: Block Sister MEL