(Kitco News) - Binance’s native blockchain, BNB Smart Chain (BSC), was hit with a bridge exploit on Thursday that led to the network being suspended for a brief period of time as the incident was investigated. As of Friday morning, the chain is back up and running, according to an update from the network.
It has now been determined that a hacker was able to exploit an issue with a cross-chain bridge that enabled them to abscond with an estimated $80 million in BNB tokens, the native currency of the chain.
Shortly after rumors of the hack started making the rounds on social media, operations on the blockchain were halted as developers for the chain worked to rectify the situation. According to an official post on Reddit, Binance “coordinated with validators to temporarily suspend BNB Smart Chain (BSC) after having determined an exploit on a cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub – which resulted in extra BNB.”
An exploit on a cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, resulted in extra BNB. We have asked all validators to temporarily suspend BSC. The issue is contained now. Your funds are safe. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates accordingly.
— CZ ?? Binance (@cz_binance) October 6, 2022
Initially, many were speculating that up to $600 million worth of funds were pilfered in the hack, but as more information came out, that number dropped to $100 million when Binance made the official post.
Hours later, after a more in-depth investigation was able to be performed, the network announced that the current estimate of solen funds is between $70 and $80 million, with $7 million in funds already successfully frozen.
To conduct the attack, the attacker first performed an exploit on the “native cross-chain bridge between BNB Beacon Chain and BNB Smart Chain, known as “BSC Token Hub,” by conducting a sophisticated forging of the low-level proof into one common library.” This allowed them to withdraw a total of two million BNB tokens, which were then deposited on the decentralized finance lending platform Venus Protocol.
They then borrowed $150 million worth of stablecoins and used cross-chain bridges to exchange for $57 million in Phantom (FPHM), $53 million in Ether (ETH) and $400,000 in Polygon (MATIC).
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Investigations by crypto sleuths have led to speculation that there is an additional $400 million in assets that were stolen by the hacker currently frozen on the BNB Chain. Stablecoin issuer Tether has announced that it has blacklisted the hacker’s wallet address.
As a result of the hack, BNB dropped 6% from its Thursday high to hit an overnight low of $278.90, but has since bounced back to $283.60, marking a 3.47% decline on the 24-hour chart.
