Jump Crypto, the Chicago-based crypto arm of Jump Trading, played a pivotal role in developing the DeFi project Wormhole. This past weekend, they were able to successfully counter-exploit a hacker who had managed to steal $140 million worth of tokens from the Wormhole protocol.
According to a recent blog post, Jump Crypto and Oasis, which develop multi-signature wallet software, teamed up to successfully recover certain assets involved with the wallet address associated with the Wormhole exploiter.
While some believe that a Whitehat group helped them in their endeavor, blockchain data suggests that Jump Crypto might be the other party involved. The ownership of the wallets involved in the counter-exploit has been traced back to the company, leading some to believe that they might have been behind the whole thing.
Oasis has revealed that it has received an order from the High Court of England and Wales to take steps to retrieve certain stolen assets.
The DeFi platform, which the attacker relied upon during one step of the attack, said a Whitehat group reached out to the team with a plan that showed it would be possible to retrieve the assets. The Whitehat group even provided a Proof of Concept on how it could be achieved.
Oasis has announced that it has returned the funds to an authorized third party and that it retains no control over the funds. “We can also confirm the assets were immediately passed onto a wallet controlled by the authorised third party, as required by the court order,” they said in a statement.
Cryptocurrencies were hit with a wave of thefts in early 2022, with the Wormhole cross-chain bridge being hit the hardest. 120,000 ETH tokens, worth above $321 million at the time, were stolen in the hack, marking the 4th largest crypto theft of all time. However, this was not the only major hack of the past year.
In 2022, the crypto industry lost approximately $4 billion worth of digital assets to hacks, fraud, scams, and rug pulls. Five major exploits totaling $2,361,000,000 were responsible for the majority of the losses.