Binance Smart Chain halted over $100M cross-chain bridge exploit
As per CoinMarketCap data, since the news of the exploit, BNB, BSC's native token, has dropped by almost 4% since the opening hours.
Transactions on Binance Smart Chain (BNB Chain), the blockchain of crypto exchange Binance, was halted on Friday due to an exploit on its cross-chain bridge, with hackers making off with cryptocurrency worth an estimated $100 million.
The BNB Chain developer on Reddit confirmed the update on the exploit saying, "Initial estimates for funds taken off BSC (Binance Smart Chain) are between $100M - $110M. However, thanks to the community and our internal and external security partners, an estimated $7M has already been frozen."
At 3:49 AM (IST), BNB Chain announced on its Twitter account stating that it would halt deposits and withdrawals amid growing concerns over a hack of the network's official cross-chain bridge.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, took to Twitter to confirm the exploit and shared the details on the hack.
According to reports by blockchain security firm SlowMist, the exploit allowed hackers to get away with over $570 million in digital assets, including Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Fantom, Arbitrum and Optimism.
Sam Sun, a researcher at Paradigm, took to Twitter to analyse the hack. As per his analysis, the hacker convinced Binance Bridge to send out 1 million BNB tokens. When it worked, the hacker used the same exploit to have another 1 million BNB tokens sent to an address they controlled.
As per CoinMarketCap data, since the news of the exploit, BNB, BSC's native token, has dropped by almost 4% since the opening hours.
(This article was updated to correct a typo.)
Edited by Swetha Kannan