Jump Crypto Successfully Reclaims Funds Stolen from the Wormhole Cross-Chain Bridges

Recently, a highly publicized cryptocurrency asset recovery operation has made significant progress. The funds stolen in the Wormhole cross-chain bridges attack that occurred in February 2022 have been successfully recovered. This recovery operation was carried out in collaboration between Jump Crypto and a decentralized lending platform.

Looking back at the events, the Wormhole cross-chain bridges encountered one of the most severe cryptocurrency asset thefts in 2022. Approximately 120,000 ETH were stolen, worth $325 million at the time. After the incident, Jump Crypto, which participated in the development of the Wormhole protocol, acted quickly to inject 120,000 ETH into Wormhole to cover the losses. Although Wormhole offered the hacker a $10 million bug bounty and a white hat protocol proposal, no agreement was reached.

Executives from Jump Trading Group have stated that they are working closely with government and private resources to track down criminals and are prepared for a long-term battle. After nearly a year of efforts, Jump has ultimately won the fight to recover the funds.

According to on-chain analysis, Jump Crypto collaborated with a certain decentralized lending platform to conduct a reverse attack on an upgradeable contract, successfully recovering stolen funds from the Wormhole hacker's vault. The hacker had previously been transferring the stolen funds through various Ethereum applications and recently opened two vaults on a lending platform, establishing leveraged long positions targeting ETH staking derivatives.

The recovery process involves multiple wallet addresses, including a multi-signature address from a lending platform, the address currently holding the recovered funds, and the sending address for executing the counterattack. The counterattack was initiated on February 21, and through a series of carefully designed transactions, the assets in the hacker's vault were successfully transferred.

During the recovery process, one wallet of Jump Crypto transferred 80 million DAI to the sending address to repay the treasury debt and successfully withdrew collateral worth $218 million. Considering the repaid debt, the net return of this counter-attack is approximately $140 million.

This incident once again highlights the importance of cross-chain bridges security. In recent years, many large-scale thefts of cryptocurrency assets have been related to cross-chain bridge attacks. However, the transparency and openness of blockchain also provide powerful tools for combating financial crime.

Although the successful recovery of funds is worth celebrating, there may be discussions in the industry about the ethics and legality of the counterattack. In any case, Jump Crypto has successfully recovered approximately $140 million in assets, and the hacker may regret missing the previously offered $10 million bounty and "get out of jail free" opportunity.

This event not only showcases the ability of the cryptocurrency industry to address security challenges but also highlights the potential of blockchain technology in tracking and recovering stolen assets. As the industry continues to evolve, we can expect to see more innovative security measures and asset protection methods emerge.