How Wormhole hacker nearly profited from W token airdrop mishap

The malicious actor behind the notorious hack incident that stole over 80,000 ETH from Wormhole in 2022 was briefly entitled to obtain an undisclosed quantity of airdropped W tokens, pseudonymous blockchain researcher Pland revealed.

In his social media publish on X, Pland quipped:

“Wormhole forgot to exclude the exploiter from the airdrop.”

Degen Information corroborated the discovering, disclosing that 4 Solana wallets linked to the hacker may declare $52,700 price of W tokens.

Austin Federa, the pinnacle of technique at Solana Basis, noticed the humorous facet to this episode, saying:

“That is really an unimaginable dedication to protocol neutrality.”

In the meantime, this information attracted widespread neighborhood scrutiny, prompting the Wormhole group to take away these addresses’ eligibility. starcrypto confirmed the exclusion of those addresses by way of the Airdrop Checker web site.

Wormhole airdrop

Interoperability protocol Wormhole launched its native W token on April 3 to a lot acclaim from the crypto neighborhood.

The occasion attracted vital consideration from malicious gamers spreading phishing hyperlinks concerning the occasion.

Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT revealed “tons of accounts with gold checkmarks within the replies posting phishing scams.”

Equally, web3 safety agency Rip-off Sniffer reported that its extension software “alerted customers to as many as 18 pretend accounts associated” to Wormhole. It added that over 100 phishing websites associated to Wormhole have been added to our blocklist.”

“Each airdrop presents a main alternative for scammers. Keep alert and shield your belongings,” Rip-off Sniffer added.

W down 25%

In the meantime, W’s worth has seen a steep decline of greater than 25% throughout its first 24 hours of buying and selling as airdrop claimers money in on their belongings.

CoinMarketCap information exhibits that the digital asset’s worth spiked to as excessive as $1.59 throughout the reporting interval earlier than drastically falling to $1.15 as of press time.

Nonetheless, regardless of this lower, a number of main exchanges, together with Binance and OKX, have listed it on their platforms, pushing its buying and selling quantity into the highest 10 of probably the most traded belongings throughout the previous day.

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