Binance’s Crypto Dips On Heels of ‘Potential Exploit’

Binance’s network, BNB Chain, has been hacked for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in what the cryptocurrency exchange earlier dubbed a “potential exploit” of a cross-chain bridge.

Binance on Twitter said it had paused its network — sending the price of Binance Coin (BNB) lower on the news which was down more than 3% to $283 by 7 p.m. ET.

“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,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao later confirmed via Twitter.

BSC Token Hub is the bridge between BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) and BNB Chain (BEP20 or BSC). Binance had earlier said it was temporarily pausing its chain due to “irregular activity.”

Eagle-eyed Twitter users appeared to be the first to identify roughly two million BNB — more than $566 million — that had been transferred to an apparent attacker’s address who has so far managed to bridge out somewhere in the neighborhood of $110 million.

In a post on Reddit at around 7:15 p.m. ET, Binance thanked node service providers for their “quick and attentive response.”

Those providers include Hash, Neptune, TW Staking, BSCScan, Legend, CertiK, Figment, NodeReal, Namelix, Defibit, Fuji, InfStones, MathWallet, Pexmons, Ankr, BNB48 Club, Avengers, Tranchess and Coinbase Cloud.

Stewards of BNB Chain are now requesting BSC Validators to get in touch with them over the next few hours in order to plan a node upgrade.

Total losses could prove to be much less

The wallet address, confirmed by Ryan West, a Blockworks’ Research analyst, shows the wallet has transferred roughly $53 million of BNB to ether (ETH), plus $48 million to the Fantom blockchain, as well as additional funds to the Avalanche, Optimism and Polygon protocols.

“Thanks to the community and our internal and external security partners, an estimated $7M has already been frozen,” Binance tweeted shortly after advising users of the exploit.

The same wallet belonging to the attacker is blacklisted from Tether, per West.

Roughly $433 million, 80% of the total, remained on the BNB Chain a few hours after the stock market’s closing bell in New York, blockchain analytics firm Halborn told Blockworks.

It would mark the industry’s second-largest hack, following the Axie Infinity Ronin Bridge exploit in March for $625 million.

According to on-chain analysis, the attacker used the cross-chain bridge protocol Stargate to transfer out.  Binance representatives did not immediately return a request for comment.

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