Orbit Chain Suffers $82M Hack On Its Bridge

Cross-chain project Orbit Chain has just experienced a major security exploit, causing the loss of approximately $82 million to bad actors. At the time of writing, the protocol’s core team has yet to give an official announcement mentioning the cause of the attack.

Orbit Chain Parts Ways With $82M

Blockchain security platform PeckShield initially identified the attack and notified the Orbit Chain team via a tweet. Only $62 million worth of cryptocurrencies had been siphoned at the time.

It seems @Orbit_Chain is being drained with >$62mhttps://t.co/jBDj4iIULh

— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) December 31, 2023

The issue is narrowed down to the bridge through which crypto assets enter and leave the Orbit Chain. The bridge supports cryptocurrencies across over 15 public blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Ripple, and more.

A screenshot of on-chain data from the X user Kgjr shows that the attacker moved 30 million USDT, 10 million DAI, and 231 wrapped BTC into their wallet address. Another 9,500 ETH (worth $21.5 million) was stolen.

Meanwhile, the latest exploit joins a long list of decentralized finance (DeFi) projects that have fallen victim to malicious players. In November, another cross-chain protocol Heco Bridge suffered an $86.6 million attack. Shortly after, PeckShield labelled the exploit as a potential rug pull, an attack where malicious actors behind a crypto project escape with users’ funds.

In the same month, the decentralized exchange (DEX) KyberSwap lost about $50 million to bad actors.

ORC Tanks 5%

With Orbit Chain seeing a major security breach, the asset’s native cryptocurrency, ORC, has seen some downtrend.

At the time of writing, ORC traded at $0.0685, representing a 5% decrease over the past 24 hours. It also represents a 99.26% drop below its all-time high (ATH) of $9.51 attained in April 2021.

Source: CoinStats

The protocol’s total value locked (TVL), as shown on the blockchain analytics platform DeFiLlama, is currently $151.9 million, remaining unaffected by the attack.