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Odaily News, SlowMist Security Team disclosed that the cross-chain bridge project Allbridge suffered an attack on August 19, 2026, with losses of approximately $190,000. Notably, this attack was not executed instantaneously—the attacker began laying the groundwork nearly a month in advance, bypassing the verification mechanism through forged cross-chain messages.According to SlowMist's analysis, on July 26, the attacker directly called Circle's MessageTransmitterV2.sendMessage function on the Polygon chain, constructing a cross-chain message disguised as CCTP-style, claiming a transfer of 1 million USDC, despite no actual USDC burn operation occurring. Subsequently, Circle generated a valid attestation for this complete message following standard procedures.Approximately 24 days later, on August 19, the attacker waited for the Base Router to receive a genuine CCTP deposit, bringing its balance to approximately 191,000 USDC, then launched the attack just 6 seconds later. Using the previously forged message and attestation, the attacker called Allbridge's receiveCctpMessage function. Due to the project's lack of critical validation, the system mistook the fraudulent cross-chain message for a genuine deposit and recorded a 1 million USDC credit.Subsequently, the attacker borrowed approximately 809,000 USDC temporarily via an Aave flash loan to match the Router's balance with the forged amount, then utilized the internal credit record to call the transfer function, ultimately moving out approximately 999,000 USDC (after deducting a 0.1% fee). After repaying the flash loan and fees, the attacker netted approximately $189,800 in profit. The root cause of this vulnerability lies in Allbridge's failure to verify the identity of the cross-chain message sender and receiver, as well as its failure to confirm whether USDC was genuinely minted or whether the balance actually increased—instead directly trusting the amount and message hash data constructed by the attacker.SlowMist emphasized that on-chain message verification does not equate to actual asset arrival. Cross-chain protocols must not only verify message authenticity but also ensure the message source is trustworthy, confirm the receiver is Circle's official TokenMessengerV2, and only record assets after confirming actual minting and balance changes. This incident once again highlights the security risks in cross-chain bridges' message verification and asset settlement processes.
the cross-chain protocol Allbridge has issued an official statement confirming that an attacker has withdrawn approximately $1.65 million in assets from the Allbridge Core liquidity pool. A detailed analysis of the incident is currently being compiled, and the full investigation results will be published subsequently. The team emphasizes that there is no further risk to current user liquidity and that the Allbridge Next service is operating normally.In response to this incident, Allbridge plans to relaunch the Core version but will remove the liquidity pool design. Future cross-chain transfers will be facilitated via Circle CCTP and the LayerZero router to eliminate the risk of liquidity pool imbalance and the model vulnerabilities exploited in this attack. This incident has accelerated the previously initiated migration plan to fully transition to the more secure new infrastructure, Allbridge Next. According to the plan, Allbridge Core and Allbridge Classic will cease operations in their current form within the next three months, and users are advised to withdraw their relevant liquidity in advance.It is understood that this attack has exposed the risks inherent in the traditional cross-chain liquidity pool model and has further driven the protocol's transition towards a cross-chain architecture based on message passing and native asset transfer.
Odaily reports, according to monitoring by Onchain Lens, Allbridge Core has been exploited on Solana. The attacker borrowed $1.12 million USDC via a Kamino flash loan, then rapidly executed a USDC/USDT swap, distorting the stablecoin pool ratio of Allbridge. They withdrew liquidity at the manipulated exchange rate and repaid the flash loan within the same transaction, extracting approximately $1.1 million in funds. The funds were subsequently mixed through a privacy protocol. The maximum single withdrawal from Allbridge was $2.24 million USDC. Further analysis of the vulnerability exploit and the affected pools is ongoing.