Hacker steals $570 million worth of crypto tokens from Binance's BNB Chain

October 07, 2022 By Omal J

(Image Credit Google)

The cryptocurrency market has had a difficult year, and things don't seem to be getting any better after more than $500 million worth of tokens were stolen from crypto giant Binance on Thursday night. The Binance Bridge, a cross-chain bridge run by the Binance cryptocurrency exchange and collectively known as BNB Chain, was the target of the exploit. The attacker was able to fabricate transactions that allowed them to withdraw two million BNB tokens from the bridge, valued at about $570 million. Hacker steals $570 million worth of crypto tokens from Binance's BNB Chain

Hacker steals $570 million worth of crypto tokens from Binance's BNB Chain

Around $87 million in money were completely withdrawn from the BNB ecosystem, but the remaining monies could not be transferred right away because BNB Chain took the drastic measure of completely shutting down the blockchain, which prevented any transactions from being executed. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao explained the attack in a tweet that was sent out shortly after it happened: "A vulnerability on a cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, resulted in additional BNB." The blockchain was back up and operating as of early Friday morning, according to a tweet from the BNB Chain account. The BNB Chain team apologized for the exploit and announced that the project would undertake a series of on-chain governance votes to decide whether to freeze the stolen cash and whether a reward should be paid for finding the hackers.

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

The blog post stated, "Looking at the bigger picture, we have noticed a series of attacks on targeting vulnerabilities in cross-chain bridges." "We will openly publish the specifics of the postmortem and all lessons learned on how to adopt more cutting-edge security measures to shore up these weaknesses." Cross-chain bridges have emerged as the most frequent target of ultra-high value hacks in recent years, in part because they constantly hold enormous quantities of cryptocurrency tokens. Although attacks on exchanges were common in the early days of the cryptocurrency sector, security has substantially improved, and it would take a hacker to extract money by breaching several different levels of security. With cryptocurrency bridges, it is sometimes possible to steal a nine-figure sum just by forging one legitimate transaction.

By Omal J

I worked for both print and electronic media as a feature journalist. Writing, traveling, and DIY sum up her life.

Hacker steals $570 million worth of crypto tokens from Binance's BNB Chain

Walmart's GenAI Search Engine: Challenging Google's Dominance in Retail Search

Introducing the MSI Claw Handheld: Your Ultimate Gaming Companion

Uber Increases In-App Ads, Prompting Mixed Reactions from Customers

Apple's iOS 18: A Leap into the AI Era

Google's Regular Pixel 8 Won't Get Gemini Nano AI

MacBook Air M3 Makes Amends for M2's Storage Blunder

Samsung Unveils the Galaxy M15 5G

Elon Musk's xAI to Open-Source Chatbot Grok

Contra: Operation Galuga - A Modern Run-and-Gun Classic

Musk Confirms X's TV App Arrives This Week

US Department of Justice confiscates bitcoins stolen 10 years ago worth $3.36B

8 US States Sue Crypto Lender Nexo

Red Notice Issued by Interpol for Do Kwon