BNB hacker ‘transferred $57m to FTM, $53m to ETH, $400k to MATIC’
16:07, 7 October 2022
Cryptocurrencies worth more than $100m have been stolen in a bridge exploit at BNB Smart Chain (BNB).
Hackers managed to transfer an estimated $57m to FTM, $53m to ETH and $400,000 to MATIC, before Binance halted its chain to stop the attack.
The team behind Binance Smart Chain, with assistance from the cryptocurrency community, suppressed the attack in a matter of hours.
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BNB Smart Chain (BNB) to US Dollar
A huge thank you to the following
— BNB Chain (@BNBCHAIN) October 6, 2022
Hash, Neptune, TW Staking, BSCScan, Legend, CertiK, Figment, NodeReal, Namelix, Defibit, Fuji, InfStones, MathWallet, Pexmons, Ankr, BNB48 Club, Avengers, Tranchess, Coinbase Cloud
For their quick and decisive actions - a true community.
Managing exploit
Binance, the company behind the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange and the Binance blockchain, also known as BNB Chain, tweeted that it was pausing BSC because of “irregular activity” on Thursday.
Rumours started spreading on Twitter, and people took to the social media site to share their on-chain analytics and information on the ongoing attack.
Some two hours later, the Binance official account on Reddit confirmed the attack: “Initial estimates for funds taken off BSC are between $100m [and] $110m. However, thanks to the community and our internal and external security partners, an estimated $7m has already been frozen,” the company wrote in a post on Reddit.
ETH to US Dollar
Before the BNB chain halt, attacker successfully transferred:
— Hacken???????? (@hackenclub) October 6, 2022
≈ $57M to Fantom
≈ $53M to Ethereum
≈ $400k to Polygon
The funds were stolen using a cross-chain bridge. Cross-chain bridges, which are used to transfer cryptocurrencies from one blockchain to another, were named a top security concern in the cryptocurrency space by the analytics company Chainalysis earlier this year.
In a report published this August, Chainalysis estimated that $2bn in cryptocurrency has been stolen across 13 separate cross-chain bridge hacks, the majority of which was stolen this year. The research firm said that this made for 69% of total funds stolen in 2022 so far.
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