Bridge Hacks: How Crypto Cross-Chain Attacks Happen and How to Avoid Them

When you move crypto from Ethereum to Solana or BNB Chain, you’re using a crypto bridge, a system that lets tokens travel between different blockchains by locking one asset and minting a wrapped version on the other. It sounds simple—until it breaks. Since 2020, bridge hacks, attacks that exploit flaws in cross-chain protocols to steal funds have cost users over $2 billion. These aren’t random glitches. They’re targeted, repeatable exploits that happen because bridges are complex, centralized, and often poorly audited.

Most cross-chain attacks, methods used by hackers to drain funds from interoperability protocols follow the same pattern: a hacker finds a vulnerability in the bridge’s smart contract, then floods it with fake transaction data to trick the system into minting far more tokens than it should. The stolen crypto is then washed through mixers or swapped for Bitcoin to hide its trail. The worst part? Many of these bridges still rely on a small group of validators—sometimes just five or six—to confirm transactions. If one is compromised, the whole bridge collapses. This isn’t theoretical. The Ronin Bridge hack in 2022, which lost $625 million, happened because a hacker gained control of five out of nine validator keys. That’s not a bug—it’s a design flaw.

And it’s not just the big names. Smaller bridges built for niche DeFi apps or new chains often skip audits entirely. You’ll see tokens like DeFi security, practices and tools used to protect decentralized finance protocols from exploits labeled as "audited"—but many of those audits are shallow, done by unknown firms, or outdated. Real security means multiple independent audits, decentralized validation, and emergency pause functions. Most bridges don’t have any of that. That’s why so many of the posts below focus on dead platforms like Arbidex or Libre Swap—because they weren’t just useless, they were dangerous. Even the most promising projects, like THORChain, have had to fix critical flaws after launch. The truth is, every time you use a bridge, you’re taking a risk. You’re trusting code written by strangers, running on servers you can’t see, and moving assets across chains that weren’t designed to talk to each other.

So what can you do? First, avoid bridges that don’t show public audit reports. Second, don’t move more than you can afford to lose. Third, watch for red flags: low liquidity, no team, or sudden price spikes in the bridge’s native token. The posts below cover real cases—like how North Korea’s Lazarus Group targets bridges, how failed exchanges like FTX Turkey left users exposed, and why some "airdrops" are just traps set by hackers. You’ll see what actually went wrong in each case, not just the headlines. There’s no magic fix. But if you understand how these attacks work, you can avoid becoming the next statistic.