BNB Chain, a Binance affiliated cryptoexchange, recently became the victim of a massive hack. In total, the company has reportedly lost a whopping US$100 million (~RM463.75 million) in Binance coin.
According to Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, the hackers initiated the theft when the hackers discovered an exploit on the cross-chain bridge within the BSC Token Hub, which is used for transactions between the BNB Beacon Chain and its self-titled Smart Chain. Soon after the hack, Binance took to Twitter to announce the breach and even confirmed via Reddit that the actual amount stolen ranged between US$100 million and US$110 million (~RM510 million). Binance says that it should be able to cover any funds that were stolen by the hackers.
.@BNBchain is currently under maintenance.
We will suspend all deposits and withdrawals via BNB chain temporarily until there are further updates.
We apologise for the inconvenience. Thank you for your patience!
— Binance (@binance) October 6, 2022
It has not been a good year for cryptocurrency exchanges, and Binance is just the latest exchange to be hit by threat actors. Back in February, hackers launched an attack on the cryptocurrency portal, Wormhole, and made off with approximately US$300 million (~RM1.39 billion) in wETH, a one-to-one-exchangeable token with Ethereum. The hackers reportedly did so by also exploiting a loophole in the exchange’s minting and wrapping process.
In August this year, hackers already targeted another cryptoexchange, Nomad, which broke through its cybersecurity measures and made off with US$200 million (~RM927 million), or approximately 10262 Bitcoins in today’s value. Ironically, the attack happened after the company actually overpromised and exhumed a sense of overconfidence towards its customers, so…there’s that.
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 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) October 6, 2022
Back over in Malaysia, Binance itself was accused of running its operations illegally by the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) and to that end, it had no choice but to remove its services from the Malaysian market.
Getting back on point, BNB Chain at the time of writing said that its platform will be halted for the time being, while it undergoes some maintenance.
