Hedera Faces $5M Exploit, Stolen Funds Moved to Ethereum

Key Insights

• Hedera blockchain loses over $5 million to a hack with funds bridged to Ethereum.
• Hedera’s native token has already lost more than 4% during the last 24 hours as speculation links the exploit to Bonzo Finance
• Crypto hacks have increased significantly in 2026, even as total losses have dropped by more than 50%.

Hedera blockchain is investigating a reported exploit that has drained more than $5 million in crypto assets. Pseudonymous onchain investigator Specter first flagged the incident on X, reporting that the attacker had already bridged part of the stolen funds to Ethereum.

Subsequent onchain updates suggested the losses had exceeded $6 million. Early evidence indicates the exploit may have affected a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol built on Hedera rather than the Hedera network itself.

The report noted that the attacker has been bridging the stolen funds from the Hedera network to Ethereum by swapping WBTC for ETH using LayerZero.

Peckshield also confirmed the incident, noting that the hacker first funded 1 ETH from Tornado Cash. They now hold over 2360 ETH and 15.58 WBTC.

However, it is unclear yet what the nature of the attack is and which protocol on the Hedera network has been affected.

There has been no official disclosure from Hedera, making it difficult to determine whether it has taken steps to address the vulnerability being exploited. However, there are speculations that the exploit is from Bonzo Finance, a DeFi protocol on Hedera.

The protocol reported that it has paused its Bonzo Lend after an incident in which an actor borrowed more assets than their collateral. The actor reportedly manipulated the price of the SAUCE token in HBAR via a third-party oracle contract, exploiting the oracle’s verification process.

This resulted in a loss of approximately $10.06 million. $1 million of these funds was borrowed by a white hacker who used the exploit to protect the funds.

Meanwhile, Hedera token HBAR is down almost 6% in the past 24 hours and is now trading around $0.067. It is unclear whether the drop is due to news of the hack or another reason.

The reported attack on Hedera Network is another in a series of exploits of blockchain networks and crypto protocols. July alone has seen BONK DAO lose $20 million in a governance attack, while DeFi protocol Summer.fi also saw a $6 million exploit.

Interestingly, a pattern of increased incidents and fewer losses is emerging. TRM Labs reported there were 207 hacks in the first half of 2026, the highest recorded in any six months

However, losses from the hack totaled $972 million, far below the $2.3 billion stolen in the first half of 2025. Most of those losses are tied to two incidents: the Drift Protocol and KelpDAO attacks. The two account for $577 million of the losses.

With smart contract exploits accounting for 125 of all hacks, the prevalence of small-scale exploits is becoming evident. The average hack now leads to about $219,000 in losses.

Experts note that this is because of the thousands of DeFi protocols, smart contracts, and token projects. This has broadened attackers’ ability to exploit more vulnerabilities at scale.

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