Why does this keep happening?
Another Hack
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange in trading volume, has been hacked yet again — and this time, the losses are genuinely staggering.
Hackers got away with around $570 million worth of the exchange’s own BNB token, CNBC reports.
“The issue is contained now,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted late on Thursday. “We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates accordingly.”
Bridge Troll
The vulnerability was seemingly a bridge allowing customers to move their BNB holdings to other blockchains. The BNB chain is made up of both the BNB Beacon Chain and BNB Smart Chain.
“An exploit on a cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, resulted in extra BNB,” Zhao wrote in his tweet. “We have asked all validators to temporarily suspend BSC.”
Hackers got away with two million BNB tokens, collectively worth around $570 million at the time of writing.
It’s the latest in a string of hacks targeting cross-chain bridges. Earlier this year, hackers looted a bridge called Nomad in what experts called a “frenzied free for all,” getting away with $190 million.
According to an August report by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, hackers had at that point gotten away with $1.4 billion in 2022 alone.
Needless to say, none of this bodes well, especially considering the industry has had an absolutely rotten year so far.
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