zkLink Nova Ethereum bridge exploited for about $780K via forged Merkle root

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On 28 October 2026, an attacker drained Ethereum escrows of the zkLink Nova aggregated rollup, taking 22.43 ETH and 11 ERC-20 tokens worth roughly $743K to $805K depending on the pricing source. No private keys were stolen or signatures forged; instead, the attacker wrote their own Merkle root into the bridge and withdrew against proofs they built. The exploit exploited a transient hash that was never reset and a privileged function that executed caller-supplied calls under the Arbitrator's trusted identity. Follow-on attacks were reported on other chains. zkLink responded by suspending block production on Nova, deploying emergency patches, and temporarily disabling withdrawals.

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