BNB Chain suffered major hack worth atleast $570 million in stolen tokens

In total, hackers withdrew 2 million BNB tokens worth about $570 million at current prices — BNB Chain said

Galvin Yu

• Updated: Friday, October 07, 2022, 09:41

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BNB Chain, the blockchain of crypto exchange Binance, was paused on Oct. 6 due to an exploit on its cross-chain bridge, with attackers making off with an estimated $570 million worth of its BNB token.

The official Twitter account of the BNB Chain first announced the temporary pause due to “irregular activity” on the blockchain but soon after added that it was due to a possible exploit. Binance provided an update that the blockchain was “under maintenance,” suspending all deposits and withdrawals.

Binance said late Thursday a cross-chain bridge linking with its BNB Chain was targeted, enabling hackers to move BNB tokens off the network. So-called cross-chain bridges are tools that allow the transfer of tokens from one blockchain to another.

The company said it had worked with network validators — entities or individuals who confirm transactions on the blockchain — to pause the creation of new blocks on BSC, suspending all transaction processing while a team of developers investigates the breach.

Binance is the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume.

Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s CEO, said in a tweet Thursday evening.

BNB Chain has since resumed operations.

Here’s what happened:

There was an exploit affecting the native cross-chain bridge between BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) and BNB Smart Chain (BEP20 or BSC), known as “BSC Token Hub.” A total of 2 million BNB was withdrawn. The exploit was through a sophisticated forging of the low-level proof into one common library.

Thanks to the assistance of all the security experts, projects, and validators, the vast majority of the funds remain under control.

What happens next? There will be on-chain governance votes to determine the following four actions for the common good of BNB:

• What to do with the hacked funds, freeze or not to freeze?
• Whether to use BNB Auto-Burn to cover the remaining hacked funds, or not?
• A Whitehat program for future bugs found, $1M for each significant bug found.
• A Bounty for catching hackers, up to 10% of the recovered funds.

The BSC validator voting function for general opinions will be switched on in the next few days via an upgrade of the BNB Beacon Chain.

Looking at the broader picture, we have seen a series of attacks targeting vulnerabilities in cross-chain bridges. We will openly share the details of the postmortem and all lessons on how to implement more advanced security measures to shore up these vulnerabilities.

A new on-chain governance mechanism will be introduced on the BNB Chain to fight and defend against possible future attacks.

The number of community validators will continue to expand in the move toward further decentralization. We believe it’s essential for the future of Web3.

This article was originally published on: Oct 7, 2022 at 09:41 AM

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