Axelar responded to the security incident: Axelar and IBC were not affected; the vulnerability stemmed from an "unlimited minting" issue in a third-party token contract.

Huoxun Finance reports that Axelar Network, a cross-chain protocol, issued a statement regarding the recent security incident involving Secret Network. The statement clarified that there was a misunderstanding in the community; neither Axelar nor the IBC protocol was attacked or compromised. The affected token smart contract was not developed, deployed, or maintained by Axelar, and its firewall mechanism prevented the risk from spreading to other chains. It is understood that the exploited contract was a fork based on CW20-ICS20, in which the developers removed two core security checks, leading to an "infinite minting" vulnerability. This fork altered the original trust model of the contract and was not subject to a new security audit. Axelar stated that anyone can deploy cross-chain asset encapsulation contracts through IBC, and this incident was a security risk introduced by modifications to the third-party contract; it was neither a unique logical flaw nor a problem with the IBC protocol itself.