Wormhole hacker moved assets worth $46 million

An unknown hacker who breached the Wormhole cross-chain protocol in February 2022 has once again moved assets totaling $46 million. PeckShield notes this.

#PeckShieldAlert The Wormhole Network Exploiter 0x629e supplied $46M worth of cryptos, including 24.4k $wstETH ($41.4M) & 3k $rETH (~$5M), to MakerDAO for 16.6M $DAI & used them to buy 9.75k $ETH ($ETH at $1,537) & 1k $stETH ($ETH at $1,543), then wrapped them for ~9.7k $wstETH pic.twitter.com/BRfygHgpit

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) February 12, 2023

The hacker’s wallet held about 24,400 wstETH in the Lido Finance protocol, worth about $41.4 million, and 3,000 rETH in Rocket Pool, worth up to $5 million. All of these were moved to MakerDAO.

Researchers speculate the hacker is seeking opportunities for arbitrage trading of the stolen funds. At first, he swapped them for 16.6 million DAI, then bought 9,750 ETH at around $1,537 and 1,000 stETH. Later, he again moved into 9,700 wstETH.

PeckShield noted that the hacker was buying on dips. However, at the time of writing, Ethereum’s price had fallen to $1,490, according to CoinGecko.

As reported earlier, the Wormhole incident was one of the largest losses in 2022 — the hacker stole $319 million in wETH.

On January 24, he sent 95,630 ETH (about $157 million) to the OpenOcean DEX exchange, and then converted into ETH-pegged assets, including stETH and wstETH from Lido.