[Secret Network Loses $4.67 Million Due to Cross-Chain Vulnerability, Attack Went Undetected for Seven Days] BlockBeats News, June 21: Blockchain research institution Common Prefix disclosed that on June 10, hackers exploited a vulnerability in the cross-chain bridge contract between Secret Network and Axelar. They forged deposits and minted unbacked tokens, subsequently cashing out approximately $4.67 million. The attack went undetected for seven days until June 17, when a legitimate cross-chain transfer failed due to insufficient funds in the custodial account, exposing the anomaly. The root cause of the vulnerability lies in the contract's transition from a custodial model to a minting model, during which two critical functions responsible for verifying the source of transfers were removed. Additionally, the contract had not undergone any external audits since its deployment in early 2023. Secret Network pointed out that Axelar's bridging infrastructure failed to trigger any effective anomaly detection or emergency suspension mechanisms before the large-scale theft of assets occurred. The stolen funds were routed through Osmosis to Ethereum, exchanged for ETH on CoW Protocol, and then dispersed into exchanges such as KuCoin, ChangeNow, and HitBTC. Currently, approximately $672,000 remains in the attacker's Axelar wallet. Secret Network has requested Axelar to freeze the address, but the request was denied. Axelar emphasized that its core protocol was never compromised and that the exploited contract was neither developed nor maintained by Axelar. Axelar has since disabled the relevant cross-chain connection and stated that it is coordinating with exchanges and law enforcement agencies to follow up on the matter. [Original Link]