In a rare blow to the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, hackers have stolen approximately $570 million worth of tokens from Binance. This is yet another blow to the troubled digital assets industry, which is struggling to regain consumer trust following a price crash. On Friday, Binance originally estimated that tokens valued between $100 million and $110 million had been stolen, halting the impacted blockchain for about eight hours.
However, the exchange subsequently announced that the hacker had stolen almost two million BNB tokens, Binance’s native cryptocurrency, valued at approximately $284 apiece. BSC Token Hub, a connection between two Binance systems, was compromised.
It occurs at a time when digital assets are attempting to recover from a credit crisis that roughly halved the value of their most prominent tokens, such as bitcoin. According to statistics from the industry, theft from projects is on the rise this year.
According to statistics from Chainalysis, cybercriminals stole about $2 billion between January and July of this year, which is nearly twice the amount they stole in the first seven months of 2017. The blockchain underlying the popular crypto-gaming site Axie Infinity was hacked for $600 million, a high-profile heist. Numerous hacks have been linked to North Korean state-sponsored actors. Given that Binance is the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, Friday’s attack is a severe blow to the digital assets market.
In a series of social media messages, Changpeng Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance, informed users: “The situation is now controlled. Your money is secure. We regret for the inconvenience and will give information in due course.”
Binance requested that the network’s validators, who safeguard the system, suspend their operations. The monies were stolen through BSC Token Hub, a bridge that enables the movement of tokens from one blockchain to another. According to Zhao, the attack exploited a vulnerability that generated more BNB tokens on the network.
Many of the most extensively used blockchains in the world, such as Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum, operate on distinct technology or use distinct coins. This implies that investors and developers cannot simply transfer their tokens to a separate blockchain in order to utilize or exchange them elsewhere.
Binance believes that around $7 million worth of tokens were frozen by the cryptocurrency community and its security operations.
Binance Smart Chain enables the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world to allow developers to create apps with smart contracts based on Binance’s own token. Binance released the new chain in September 2020, at a time when there was tremendous interest in decentralized finance initiatives within the cryptocurrency sector.
