The post Nomad Bridge Hacker Arrested in Israel Over $190M Crypto Exploit appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Nearly three years after one of the largest DeFi exploits in history, authorities have arrested a key suspect in the $190 million Nomad Bridge hack. Alexander Gurevich, an American-Israeli dual citizen, was detained in Israel and now faces extradition to the United States. Arrest of Nomad Bridge Hack Suspect Gurevich, a dual Russian-Israeli citizen, has been arrested in Israel for his alleged involvement in the $190 million Nomad Bridge hack that occurred in August 2022. The arrest was made at Ben Gurion Airport while Gurevich was attempting to flee to Russia under a new identity, having legally changed his name to “Alexander Block” just days prior. “He fits the profile of a crypto-native threat actor: skilled in smart contract exploitation but ultimately undone by poor opsec,” said Peter Kacherginsky, a blockchain security expert and formerly of Coinbase’s Unit 0x security team, on X in reaction to Gurevich’s arrest. Details of the 2022 Nomad Bridge Exploit The Nomad Bridge exploit remains one of the most remarkable and chaotic hacks in decentralized finance (DeFi) history. On August 1, 2022, attackers took advantage of a critical vulnerability in a Nomad smart contract — a verification bug introduced in a routine code update that allowed messages with invalid proofs to be accepted as valid. This misconfiguration in the bridge’s process() function caused the contract to accept any message with the correct root hash, regardless of whether the proof was legitimate. Once one user figured out the exploit, believed to be Gurevich, it was rapidly copied and pasted by hundreds of wallets in a type of “mob attack,” turning a targeted hack into an opportunistic frenzy. Gurevich’s Alleged Actions and Attempted Escape It has been reported that US prosecutors are accusing Gurevich of being the first to exploit the weakness in Nomad’s smart contracts. This…

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Filed under: News - @ May 23, 2025 1:28 am