After a short downtime Thursday night due to reports of an exploit, which proved out to be genuine, Binance’s BNB Smart Chain (BSC) went back up early Friday morning. Binance said that on Thursday, additional BNB were created on the exchange’s cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, leading to a theft of at least $70 million (Cointelegraph).
With a market worth of almost $46 billion, BNB is the fourth biggest digital asset. The price of BNB has dropped 3.6% since yesterday morning at 7:44 a.m. (EST).
In the criminal underground, hacking cross-chain bridges is a common subject. Including the $625 million Ronin Bridge breach, which is likely the work of a criminal outfit in North Korea, Chainalysis predicted in August that similar hackers have taken $2 billion through the first seven months of 2022. “Bridges are an interesting target because they generally offer a central storage point of money that back the ‘bridged’ assets on the receiving blockchain,” the Chainalysis analysis said.
Following news yesterday that a hacker had stolen almost 2 million BNB tokens by exploiting a vulnerability in the network, Binance’s BNB Chain was brought back up this morning.
Back and running
From 20+ minutes ago, BNB Smart Chain (BSC) has been functioning normally. The validators have verified their identities, and improvements are being made to the community’s infrastructure, according to a tweet from the official BNB Chain account.
This amount, at the time of the vulnerability, was equivalent to almost $586 million, making it the second-largest in the history of cryptocurrency.
According to security company SlowMist, the hacker stole over $110 million. The company said that the suspension of the BNB chain yesterday night rendered it unable to move the vast majority of the stolen tokens, worth an estimated $430 million, off of the network.
The CEO of Binance, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, tweeted last night that the “latest effect estimate is roughly $100m USD equivalent.”
Following “coordination between the community and internal and external security partners,” the BNB Chain team announced on Reddit that about $7 million had been frozen.
Tokens tied to the US dollar and issued by stablecoin provider Tether were frozen, according to a study by SlowMist.
Since the attacker did not access existing wallets, BNB Chain and CZ reassured token holders that “all funds are secure.”
BSC Token Hub, a “cross-chain bridge,” was compromised, leading to the creation of excess BNB. We’ve requested that all validators put BSC on hold for the time being. We’ve managed to contain the problem. Money is secure with me,” CZ tweeted.
Cover: Hackers – Universal public domain.
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