An attacker minted $1.2 billion in counterfeit crypto on the Hyperbridge platform, and then liquidated the assets for just over $237,000. Hyperbridge, a popular cross-chain bridge, was hit when a code bug allowed the creation of unbacked tokens. The hacker exploited a vulnerability to trick the protocol into minting one billion Polkadot DOT tokens. On-chain records show the tokens were moved onto Ethereum and sold via Uniswap due to liquidity constraints.
Although the tokens had a paper value of about $1.2 billion, the realized sum was far smaller due to liquidity limitations. Hyperbridge was launched on Polkadot in November 2024 and was developed by Lanlege and co-founder David Salami through Polytope Labs, a Lagos-based blockchain research company started in 2023.
The root cause of the incident appears to be a forgery of the messages the bridge uses to ensure users can only withdraw tokens equivalent to the amount they deposit, BlockSec, a crypto security firm, said on X. The hacker, BlockSec said, found a way to fake these messages. This allowed them to trick the protocol into creating one billion DOT tokens without depositing the same amount into the bridge.
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