Hackers steal over $31 million in two separate crypto bridge exploits within hours

In a span of six hours, hackers exploited three separate crypto protocols for over $35 million. The attacks drained $24.15M from AFX Trade's Arbitrum bridge, $7.54M from the Verus-Ethereum bridge via a repeat vulnerability, and $3.86M from B² Network. The exploits stemmed from compromised keys and logic flaws, not broken cryptography, highlighting persistent security weaknesses in cross-chain systems.

Three bridge exploits

• ▪The Verus-Ethereum bridge was exploited for about $7.54 million in a separate attack
• ▪AFX Trade, a decentralized perpetuals exchange on Arbitrum, was exploited for approximately $24.15 million on July 22, 2026
• ▪B² Network, a Bitcoin scaling network, lost roughly $3.86 million after an attacker compromised its token staking contract
• ▪The attacks on AFX, Verus, and B² Network resulted in a combined loss exceeding $35 million over a 6-hour period
• ▪The attacker moved the stolen $24.15 million from the AFX bridge to Ethereum and swapped the funds for approximately 12,468 ETH

Verus repeat vulnerability

• ▪Verus redeposited funds recovered from the May 2026 hack into the same vulnerable bridge on July 8, 2026, two weeks before it was exploited again
• ▪The exploit on the Verus-Ethereum bridge reused the same contract path and bug class as a previous hack in May 2026 that caused an $11.5 million loss
• ▪The Verus vulnerability allowed an attacker to trigger payouts on the Ethereum side that were not backed by assets on the Verus side

B² Network compromised keys

• ▪An attacker gained unauthorized access to the upgrade authority of B² Network's token staking contract, allowing them to drain funds
• ▪B² Network suspended staking operations and announced it would fully compensate affected users

Smart contract permission failures

• ▪Arbitrum co-founder Steven Goldfeder stated that the network's native bridge was not hacked or exploited in the AFX incident
• ▪The recent series of exploits were caused by logic flaws or compromised administrative keys, not by breaking the underlying cryptography
• ▪AFX suspended its bridge and publicly offered the attacker 30% of the stolen funds as a "white hat bounty" in exchange for the return of the other 70%

AI-driven intrusion capabilities

• ▪The OpenAI test demonstrated that AI can now perform complex, multi-step intrusion work that previously required a skilled human team
• ▪A recent OpenAI analysis showed its AI models could compromise servers by chaining stolen credentials and unknown software flaws in a test environment