# Xscope: Hunting for Cross-Chain Bridge Attacks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.07119 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.07119/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 15 Aug 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [BridgeShield: Risk-Aware Graph Modeling for Cross-Chain Bridge Attack Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.20517/) (2025)
- [Spec2Twin-Chain: Orchestrating Bi-Level Optimization with LLMs for Blockchain Digital Twin Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.30050/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Cross-Chain bridges have become the most popular solution to support asset interoperability between heterogeneous blockchains. However, while providing efficient and flexible cross-chain asset transfer, the complex workflow involving both on-chain smart contracts and off-chain programs causes emerging security issues. In the past year, there have been more than ten severe attacks against cross-chain bridges, causing billions of loss. With few studies focusing on the security of cross-chain bridges, the community still lacks the knowledge and tools to mitigate this significant threat. To bridge the gap, we conduct the first study on the security of cross-chain bridges. We document three new classes of security bugs and propose a set of security properties and patterns to characterize them. Based on those patterns, we design Xscope, an automatic tool to find security violations in cross-chain bridges and detect real-world attacks. We evaluate Xscope on four popular cross-chain bridges. It successfully detects all known attacks and finds suspicious attacks unreported before. A video of Xscope is available at https://youtu.be/vMRO_qOqtXY.