Aethir says it contained a bridge exploit with losses under $90K, pledges compensation and investigation
Aethir says it has contained an attack that targeted several ATH bridge contracts linking Ethereum to other chains, and that its systems remain fully operational. The team reported that the main ATH supply on Ethereum was not affected, and that user losses were kept below $90,000.
What happened
Aethir detected a malicious actor exploiting ATH bridge contracts and quickly disconnected the affected contracts to stop further drain. The project confirmed the ETH–ARB bridge on Squid was not impacted. Aethir says the intact main ETH ATH supply helped prevent the incident from cascading across the ecosystem.
Response and next steps
The team said it is working with authorities and exchange partners to trace the attacker and block associated funds. Aethir promised a full compensation plan next week and said it will publish a complete attacker wallet list in Discord as investigators monitor fund movements. A detailed postmortem will follow, explaining what happened, which users were affected, and how compensation will be handled.
Partners and forensic help
Aethir credited several exchanges for rapid action, naming Binance, Upbit, Bithumb and HTX for blacklisting wallets tied to the exploit. The project also thanked security firm ZeroShadow for aiding the analysis, saying early partner interventions helped limit losses and support the investigation.
Conflicting loss estimates
Blockchain security firm PeckShield flagged the exploit a day earlier and initially estimated losses at roughly $400,000, reporting that attacker funds were moved from BNB Chain to Tron through multiple addresses. Aethir’s more conservative figure of under $90,000 highlights the importance of ongoing fund tracing and final accounting to reconcile differing estimates.
Wider context
The incident is part of a broader surge in DeFi-related security incidents. PeckShield reported about $52 million in losses from 20 security events in March — nearly double February’s total — and warned that exploits can ripple across linked DeFi platforms, weakening liquidity and creating bad debt. PeckShield pointed to recent spillovers affecting ResolvLabs and Venus Protocol, and to targeted social-engineering thefts from individual accounts, including a multimillion-dollar theft tied to Kraken.
Bottom line
Aethir says it contained the breach quickly and is moving to compensate affected users and trace the attacker, while industry observers continue to scrutinize the diverging loss estimates and the broader implications for cross-chain bridge security.
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