The $326 Million Wormhole Bridge Exploit – One Missing Line of Code, Eleven Minutes, Game Over
February 2, 2022: a hacker submits a single transaction to the Wormhole bridge, fakes guardian signatures, and mints 120,000 wrapped ETH on Solana out of thin air — instantly worth $326 million. He cashes out in under 11 minutes, Jump Trading bails out the hole with their own ETH, and the hacker disappears with one of the cleanest exploits ever written. We dissect the exact missing validation check, the lightning-fast laundering route, why the funds are still sitting untouched on Ethereum in 2025, and how this single if-statement failure changed bridge security forever.