Hackers steal $31.6M with 2 crypto bridge attacks within 7 hours

AFX, a decentralized perpetual exchange operating on Arbitrum, reportedly lost $24.15 million on Wednesday, while the Verus Ethereum bridge was attacked hours later.
Hackers stole more than $31.6 million across two unrelated crypto bridge exploits spaced just hours apart, targeting bridges operated by decentralized perpetual exchange AFX and Verus Protocol.
According to Blockaid, AFX, a decentralized perpetual exchange operating on Arbitrum, reportedly lost $24.15 million on Wednesday through a hack targeting one of its crosschain bridges. Hours later, Blockaid said it detected an exploit targeting the Verus Ethereum Bridge that resulted in about $7.5 million in crypto being stolen.
The back-to-back exploits highlight the continued security risks facing crosschain bridges, which hold large pools of assets and move funds between separate blockchains.
“Another bridge, another exploit. Bridges will always be a weak link, until security is upgraded,” onchain investigator TheCrypticWolf said in a post on X.
AFX protocol bridge hack
Blockaid said Wednesday it detected an exploit at 9:30 pm UTC targeting a bridge operated by AFX. Offchain Labs co-founder Stephen Goldfeder confirmed a bridge hack had affected a third-party protocol.
“We’re aware of a report of a bridge hack on Arbitrum and are investigating. We can confirm that the transaction in question originated from a third-party protocol, and the Arbitrum native bridge has not been hacked or exploited in any way,” Goldfeder said in a post on X.
SunSec, founder of the Web3 security community DeFiHackLabs and a contributor to SEAL, said the evidence suggested compromised keys, rather than a smart contract logic bug, were responsible for the exploit.
Cointelegraph reached out to AFX for comment.
Related: Allbridge pauses cross-chain bridge after $1.65M exploit
Verus Ethereum bridge suffers another attack
In a separate incident, Blockaid detected an exploit targeting the Verus Ethereum bridge, leading to $7.5 million in Ether, tBTC (a Bitcoin-backed ERC-20 token), USDC, USDt, EURC, MKR and scrvUSD drained from bridge reserves.
Blockaid said the attack appears similar to the previous Verus Ethereum Bridge incident in May that drained $11.58 million, using the same attack method but a different attacker wallet.
“An attacker used the bridge import path to trigger unbacked Ethereum-side payouts,” said Blockaid.
Magazine: Has Bitcoin bottomed for this cycle? Analysts say ‘not yet’

Facts Only

* Hackers stole more than $31.6 million across two crypto bridge exploits.
* The first hack targeted a bridge operated by the decentralized perpetual exchange AFX on Arbitrum, resulting in a reported loss of $24.15 million on Wednesday.
* A subsequent exploit targeted the Verus Ethereum Bridge.
* The second attack resulted in about $7.5 million in crypto being stolen from the Verus Ethereum Bridge reserves, including Ether and various tokens.
* Offchain Labs co-founder Stephen Goldfeder confirmed a bridge hack affected a third-party protocol related to Arbitrum.
* Investigators suggested compromised keys were responsible for the AFX exploit rather than a smart contract logic bug.
* The second attack appeared similar to a previous incident where $11.58 million was drained from the Verus Ethereum Bridge in May using a similar attack method.

Executive Summary

A decentralized perpetual exchange on Arbitrum and the Verus Ethereum bridge experienced two separate cryptocurrency thefts within a seven-hour window, totaling over $31.6 million. The first incident involved a hack targeting a cross-chain bridge associated with the AFX protocol on Arbitrum, resulting in a loss of $24.15 million. Subsequently, an exploit targeted the Verus Ethereum Bridge, leading to the draining of approximately $7.5 million across various crypto assets, including Ether and various tokens. The back-to-back exploits highlight persistent security vulnerabilities within cross-chain bridging infrastructure. Investigators suggest that compromised keys rather than smart contract logic bugs were responsible for the initial AFX exploit.

Full Take

The sequence of events reveals a critical systemic fragility in cross-chain security, where vulnerabilities in one component are immediately exploited in another. The fact that exploits occurred across two distinct bridges—one on Arbitrum and one on Ethereum—within hours suggests a shared or replicable failure mode in the underlying bridge technology, rather than isolated bugs in individual contracts. This pattern implies that the reliance on external bridge mechanisms introduces a single point of catastrophic failure. The commentary from onchain investigators positions bridges as inherent weak links until security is fundamentally upgraded, indicating a cycle where rapid innovation often outpaces necessary security hardening. The potential implication is that current protocols incentivize speed over exhaustive auditing, allowing attackers to capitalize on known attack vectors repeatedly across different ecosystems. The focus should shift from mitigating individual hacks to demanding comprehensive, unified security standards for cross-chain communication layers. What mechanisms exist to enforce consistent, high-level security remediation across disparate bridge implementations? How can incentives be structured to prioritize systemic resilience over protocol speed in the decentralized finance space?

Sentinel — Human

Confidence

The text reads like a factual aggregation of specific, time-sensitive reports concerning cryptocurrency security incidents, showing strong indicators of journalistic sourcing rather than generic AI synthesis.

Signals Detected

Moderate sentence length variance; uses direct attribution and quotation effectively.

Logical flow connecting two distinct but related events; incorporates specific, verifiable claims from named sources.

Uses multiple disparate data points ($, names, dates) effectively without relying on pure template phrasing.

Specific figures and attribution (Blockaid reports, named individuals like Goldfeder, SunSec) suggest grounding in specific reporting rather than pure generation.

Human Indicators

Specific references to recent social media activity (posts on X) from known figures; citation of specific protocols and amounts implies reliance on real event reporting.