$190M Stolen In A Nomad Bridge Phishing Scam

Nomad Bridge is a cross-chain protocol that became the victim of intriguing phishing exploit on August 1 as it lost nearly all of its $200 million in crypto funds. The protocol was drained of funds over an extensive process of many transactions that left the Nomad Bridge as a poor church mouse with only $651 left on its books.

BREAKING: Nomad cross-chain bridge has been hacked with over $190,000,000 stolen.

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) August 2, 2022

Nomad Bridge Is Crashing Down

2022 has proven to be one of the most active years in terms of the total number of hacks seen within the crypto space so far. Moreover, the phishing exploits have established themselves as something of a major trademark strategy being used by the fraudsters.

Now, Nomad Bridge seems to be the latest to have been struck down by the cruel hand of crypto hackers. This news came just a month after the Harmony (ONE) protocol was victimized similarly.

Even though the phishing scam has various similarities to many of the other attacks executed earlier this year, there is one thing that is seen to separate this specific hacker from their predecessors; the criminals, for whatever reason, sent transactions in nearly equal sums, as USD Coin (USDC) was sent to the thieves’ wallets to the exact amount of 202,440.725413 across nearly 200 separate incidents.

Currently, there are 18 million dollars left in the contract, which will probably be drained in the next few hours. pic.twitter.com/bKiEfd2fsd

— Paradigm Engineer #420 (@ParadigmEng420) August 1, 2022

The Community Wants To Help

Despite almost all of the protocol’s funds getting stolen, one spokesperson from Nomad said that concerned community members came in as part of an attempt to safeguard as much of the stolen funds as possible.

The “White hat friends”, as they were known, managed to benevolently protect funds in Dai (DAI), USD Coin (USDC), GeroWallet (GERO), wrapped Ether (wETH), and some other smaller cryptos. Nomad Bridge asserted:

“Our goal is to identify the accounts involved and to trace and recover the funds.”

Nomad facilitates cross-chain transfers between Avalanche (AVAX), Evmos, Ethereum (ETH), and Moonbeam. Notably, Moonbeam’s smart contracts were also targeted by the criminals in the phishing attack. The platform was in the end compelled to disable user transfers and smart contracts interactions “to investigate the security incident”.

Eventually, the phishing incident has come at maybe the worst time for Nomad Bridge, as the firm had completed successful funding round in April that garnered an impressive $225 million from major players like OpenSea and Coinbase Ventures.

Although the attack set Nomad back three times less than the infamous $600 million Ronin Bridge hack in April, the incident now raised calls for the implementation of extra security measures to guarantee that users do not eventually succumb to the complex phishing scams executed by modern crypto hackers.

Why You Need To Care

With phishing scams appearing to be an often strategy of crypto criminals this year, it is crucial for protocols, agencies, users, and security initiatives to conduct a thorough analysis of every case to develop perfect measures against them.