A hacker from 2022 who worked on a wormhole bridge was briefly qualified for the latest airdrop

It seems that the hacker who stole more than $320 million from the Wormhole bridge was originally eligible for a $50,000 Wormhole airdrop.

There was an airdrop where the hacker responsible for the $320 million Wormhole bridge attack in 2022 might have claimed $50,000 worth of newly launched W tokens.

Hackers stole $321 million worth of cryptocurrency from the cross-chain bridge in 2022, according to a post by anonymous researcher Pland on April 4th on X. The researcher said that the Wormhole team had neglected to remove many wallet addresses associated with that attack.

Degen News issued an April 4 post to X citing data from Airdrop.link, an airdrop checker based in Solana, which indicated that four wallet addresses were capable of momentarily obtaining Wormhole’s airdrop.

Around 31,642 Wormhole (W) tokens, or almost $50,000 at current values, would have been available to the hacker had they chosen to claim their airdrops.

According to Cointelegraph’s independent verification, the wallet addresses shown on airdrop.link are no longer eligible for the distribution, which might mean that the Wormhole team has already sealed the loophole.

Cointelegraph tried to get in touch with Wormhole, but no response came by the deadline for publication. The Solana block explorer, Solana.fm, has identified all four of the eligible wallet addresses as being associated with the 2022 Wormhole hack.

In February 2022, the Wormhole Bridge was one of the biggest hacks in the history of the crypto sector, taking in an astounding $321 million.

Nevertheless, a “counter exploit” was carried out on the Wormhole protocol hacker in February 2023 by Jump Crypto, a Web3 infrastructure provider, and Oasis.app, a decentralized finance (DeFi) tool.

After recovering $225 million worth of digital assets from the wormhole exploiter, the two businesses sent the funds back to secure wallets.

Eligible users will have the opportunity to airdrop around 675 million Wormhole (W) tokens, which is equivalent to almost $850 million at current values, according to Wormhole’s announcement on April 3.

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