Verus Network has temporarily paused operations, with officials confirming an attack on the Verus-Ethereum cross-chain bridge.

BlockBeats News, May 18th, Verus Foundation announced that the Verus-Ethereum cross-chain bridge was attacked on May 18th. The attacker stole assets such as ETH, USDC, and tBTC from the Ethereum smart contract, while other assets on the bridge remain unaffected.

The foundation stated that due to the attack, the Verus network is currently paused, and most mining nodes have proactively gone offline as designed. The development team is investigating the attack vector, assessing the scope of the loss, and formulating a recovery plan.

Meanwhile, Verus has called on the attacker to return the funds voluntarily. They mentioned that if the full amount is returned, the team is willing to pay a bug bounty and will not pursue further legal action. Otherwise, they will cooperate with law enforcement agencies to take legal measures.

The team also cautioned users to beware of scams impersonating officials offering a "compensation plan," stating that there is currently no official compensation program in place, and users should not engage with any suspicious direct message accounts.