The BNB Chain, part of the Binance ecosystem, was rocked by a major hack last night. This brought the blockchain to a complete standstill. According to some, the hacker managed to steal half a billion dollars, even though a large part of this crypto is under control of the network. validators.
Binance Smart Chain Target of Massive Hack
Last night, the blockchain paused after “irregular activities” took place. Not much later, the network was forced to stop completely after it turned out that something was really wrong. A hacker would bridge, hacked a bridge between different blockchains. The hacker was thus able to steal large amounts of cryptocurrency.
Among these cryptocurrencies we find ethereum (ETH), avalanche (AVA), BNB coin (BNB) and fantom (FTM). In total, it would be $570 million in crypto, blockchain security firm SlowMist said in a statement tweet.
The network and its validators quickly sprang into action. As a result, $430 million would now be frozen on the network itself. The hacker managed to take $110 million from the BNB Chain. Of that, $6.5 million USDT has been frozen. All in all, the attacker still has access to $83.3 million, according to SlowMist.
It is important to note that this does not concern crypto from wallets of BNB users. It would be newly created crypto.
Exact damage BNB hack still unknown
Because the incident has only just happened, it is not yet clear how extensive the damage is. The cause is according to a new update from BNB Chain at least at the BSC Token Hub, a native cross chain bridge between BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) and BNB Smart Chain (BEP20 or BSC).
In the same update, the team explains what the next steps will be in the near future. The community will vote on four topics:
- What to do with the hacked crypto, freeze or not freeze?
- Whether we should use the BNB Auto-Burn to cover the remaining hacked funds or not?
- A Whitehat program for future bugs found, $1 million for each significant bug found.
- A premium for catching hackers, up to 10% of the money recovered.
As can be read in this morning’s altcoin update, the price of BNB took a serious dive. Just before the hack, BNB was trading at $293. After the news was announced, the price shot up to $280 in one go. Meanwhile, BNB appears to be stabilizing again.