Shibarium Bridge Security Incident Resolved
The Shiba Inu development team has successfully restored the Shibarium bridge following a significant security breach that occurred recently. After working continuously for ten days, the team managed to recover assets and implement stronger security controls to prevent similar incidents in the future.
The attack targeted the Shibarium Bridge directly, with the attacker also staking 4.6 million BONE tokens in what appeared to be an attempt to influence validator thresholds. This combination of checkpoint manipulation and stake amplification created a serious threat that required immediate action from the development team.
Intensive Recovery Efforts
Developers worked around the clock, including late nights, weekends, and holidays, to address the security vulnerabilities. The team organized their response into overlapping workstreams and brought in cybersecurity firm Hexens.io as an independent reviewer to validate each fix. Multiple daily meetings and continuous log reviews ensured thorough oversight of the recovery process.
To minimize potential points of failure, responsibilities were divided among different team members handling infrastructure, validator operations, test networks, and monitoring separately. This approach allowed for parallel progress while maintaining strict oversight throughout the recovery.
Enhanced Security Measures Implemented
Following the containment of the breach, the team introduced several security upgrades. Over 100 critical contracts across Shibarium, ShibaSwap, and the Shiba Inu Metaverse were migrated to secured multi-signature wallets, preventing any single entity from controlling mission-critical assets.
All validator signing keys were rotated to replace those tied to the compromised state, and a blacklist feature was added to staking operations. This new mechanism enables the system to immediately block malicious addresses from staking, unstaking, withdrawing rewards, or re-bonding funds. Each of these enhancements was thoroughly tested on development networks before being deployed to the main network.
Asset Recovery and System Repairs
One of the most significant achievements was the recovery of 4.6 million BONE tokens that were linked to the attacker. Since the tokens were staked through a contract rather than an external wallet, the team developed a specialized recovery method using the StakeManager to correct legacy unbonding data and restore ledger integrity.
The withdrawal delay was also extended from one checkpoint to approximately 30 checkpoints, providing about 24 hours for the team to detect unusual activity before withdrawals are finalized. This change adds an important layer of defense against future attacks.
The fake checkpoint injection that initially caused Heimdall’s halt was carefully repaired through a structured three-stage process involving development networks before final deployment to the main network. The checkpoint system has since returned to normal operations without further issues.
Future Plans and Infrastructure Improvements
Looking ahead, the Shiba Inu team is taking a cautious approach to restoring full bridge functionality. A blacklist mechanism will be added to the Plasma Bridge to proactively block malicious addresses from initiating transactions. Once this safeguard is in place, full Plasma Bridge functionality will gradually return.
The team is also developing a compensation plan for affected users, which will include phased withdrawals, transaction limits, and coordination with partners. Infrastructure improvements include partnering with dRPC.org to consolidate RPC services under a unified endpoint and conducting a comprehensive documentation update to simplify node setup and validator instructions.
Developers emphasized that they will only communicate timelines when it’s safe to do so, avoiding over-promises while protecting sensitive operations during the ongoing recovery process.
