Due to a suspected DNS hijacking, interoperability protocol Celer Network (CELR) has shut down its cBridge asking its customers to rescind the approval for a number of contracts in several blockchains, including ETH and BSC.
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 problem.
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.
The platform also recommended its customers cancel 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 step while the platform continues to investigate the problem and find a solution, users can go to the token approval page for each network and cancel the approvals.
Cross-chain bridges were criticized by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in January for having basic security flaws. Buterin asserts that although the future will be multi-chain, cross-chain may not be possible.
Bridge exploits have also increased in frequency in the cryptocurrency industry, costing $2 billion in losses in 2022 alone. 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, according to research by blockchain analytics company Chainalysis.
There are still nice people in the crypto sector despite the hacks. The majority of the money lost due to the recent Curve Finance exploit was 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.
