Interoperability protocol Celer Network (CELR) has asked its users to reject the approval for a number of contracts after shutting down its cBridge due to a suspected DNS hijacking.
The project’s initial research revealed that some unusual DNS activity occurred on August 17 at around 7 PM (UTC). At the time of writing, Celer Network is still working to investigate and learn more about the incident.
The team has taken down the cBridge as a first step to prevent any further disasters and protect its users while the platform continues to locate the issue.
Celer Network preventive measures
The platform also recommended its users revoke token approvals for smart contracts in Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), Avalanche (AVAX), Binance Smart Chain, Arbitrum, Astar, and Aurora in addition to shutting down the bridge.
As a preventative move, while the platform continues to investigate the issue and figure out a solution, users can go to the token approval page for each network and revoke the approvals.
Cross-chain bridges were criticized by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in January for having basic security flaws. In addition, Buterin asserts that although the future will be multi-chain, it might not necessarily be cross-chain.
Bridge exploits have also increased in frequency in the cryptocurrency industry, costing $2 billion in losses in 2022 alone. Research by blockchain analytics company Chainalysis revealed that Cross-chain bridge attacks have amassed over 69% of the cryptocurrency that was stolen this year, with Q1 leading due to the March Ronin Bridge hack.
The majority of the funds lost due to the recent Curve Finance exploit were recovered by cryptocurrency exchange Binance earlier in August. In addition to this, ethical hackers have given the Nomad bridge hack victims back almost $32 million in digital assets. This shows that despite the rising hacking cases there are still good people in the Crypto space.
