Hackers have stolen $80 million in cryptocurrency from the Qubit DeFi platform

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Qubit Finance, a Defi platform, has become the latest victim of a high-value theft, with hackers stealing around $80 million incryptocurrencies on Thursday.

This is the largest hack of the year so far.

Qubit Finance acknowledge the hack in an incident report. The hack occurred on the evening of January 27th.

Deposits made in onecryptocurrencies can be withdrawn in another, thanks to a service provided by Qubit. Qubit Finance has a bridge between the two networks.

The hacker was able to exploit a security flaw in Qubit's smart contract code that allowed them to send in a deposit of 0 ETH and withdraw almost $80 million in Binance Coin.

CertiK analysts wrote that bridges will only become more important as we move from an Ethereum-dominant world to a truly multi-chain world.

The Qubit Finance team appealed to the hacker to negotiate with them in order to minimize losses for the Qubit community.

pic.twitter.com/G1WOMglVUU

— Qubit Finance (@QubitFin) January 28, 2022

Qubit's incident report stated that the team was trying to give the hacker the maximum reward possible under their bug bounty program. There is a listing for Qubit on the Immunefi bug bounty platform.

Several DeFi projects have suffered exploits since the launch of the smart chain. The most severe hacks include a hack on Meerkat Finance in March 2021, a hack on Uranium Finance in April and a hack on Venus Finance in May.