Verus’s Ethereum bridge is under attack, with losses reaching about $11.58 million, according to onchain security firm Blockaid. At the time of disclosure, the exploit was still ongoing, and Verus had not issued a formal public statement.
Blockaid posted an alert on X on the 18th, saying its vulnerability detection system had identified an active exploit affecting the Verus bridge connected to Ethereum. The firm did not disclose the exact attack method, and it did not specify which assets were first impacted. What was clear from the alert was the scale: funds were continuing to leave the bridge.
PeckShield traced the stolen assets
Blockchain security firm PeckShield later published a more detailed breakdown. It said the attacker stole 103.6 tBTC, 1,625 ETH, and 147,000 USDC. After the theft, the assets were swapped into 5,402.4 ETH, worth roughly $11.4 million.
Those funds were reported to be sitting in the address 0x65Cb8b128Bf6e690761044CCECA422bb239C25F9. Onchain records also showed that around 14 hours earlier, the address received 1 ETH through the mixing protocol Tornado Cash as initial funding before the exploit was launched. That sequence points to preparation onchain before the attack was carried out.
The bridge is a key link between Verus and Ethereum
Verus presents itself as a blockchain protocol focused on decentralized identity and cross-chain value transfer. On its website, the project describes its vision as “The Internet of Value,” with an emphasis on ownership of identity data and digital assets. The Ethereum bridge targeted in this incident serves as core infrastructure for connecting the Verus ecosystem to the Ethereum network.
When a bridge is compromised, the fallout is rarely limited to a single contract. Custody flows, cross-chain verification, and mint-and-redeem mechanisms can all come under pressure at once. The technical root cause in this case has not been made public yet, but the bridge’s role inside the ecosystem has already made the incident a major security event to watch.
Bridge security remains a repeated weak point
Cross-chain bridges have remained one of the most exposed parts of the crypto sector for years. The source material cites the $190 million Nomad hack in 2022 and the $718 million BNB Chain bridge incident as earlier examples. Security researchers usually group bridge risks into several areas: flawed contract logic, oracle manipulation, and validator node compromise.
For now, the confirmed facts are limited to the stolen assets, the conversion into ETH, and the address holding the funds. Details on the exploit path, the exact vulnerability, and any response steps are still pending from the project or security teams.