Following the exposure of a cross-chain bridge security incident associated with Axelar on June 19, the AXL token did not experience significant selling pressure. According to Coinpaper, at the time of writing, AXL was trading at $0.04558, a 24-hour increase of approximately 3.85%, and continued its upward trend after the incident was made public.
Approximately $4.67 million in assets were affected.
Axelar stated that the affected assets are those bridged from the Axelar chain to the Secret Network via the Cosmos IBC connection. Initial information indicates that the problem is concentrated on the ICS-20 smart contract used for IBC connections on the Secret side.
The team stated that the transferred assets were worth approximately $4.67 million. Current indications suggest that the incident is limited to the assets bridged to Secret; other IBC connections, Secret tokens, and other Axelar integrations have not yet been affected.
Axelar has suspended the relevant connections.
Axelar stated that after discovering the anomaly, its emergency committee has shut down the Secret and Secret-SNIP connections and is contacting relevant exchanges and law enforcement agencies to handle the follow-up matters.
The team also emphasized that the Axelar core protocol was not affected by the attack, and a full recap will be released later, explaining the cause of the vulnerability, the affected assets, and the measures taken after the problem was discovered.
Security incidents continued to increase in June.
This incident has once again brought the security of bridging infrastructure and privacy networks to the forefront of market attention. Since June, the crypto industry has experienced a series of security breaches.
- Humanity Protocol disclosed on June 8 that it had been attacked, resulting in a loss of approximately $36 million.
- Zcash disclosed a serious flaw in the Orchard shielding pool on June 4.
- Aztec Network's old version of Private Rollup Bridge was hacked twice within a week.
Judging from market reactions, traders seem to be separating this incident from the Axelar mainnet itself, focusing more on whether there is a single point of failure in the Secret side contract. Next, the market will await Axelar's official debriefing, paying close attention to the specific location of the vulnerability, the flow of affected tokens, the recovery plan, and whether new protective measures will be added to the IBC-related bridging connections.
