Binance-linked blockchain hit by $570 million crypto hack, Binance says

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LONDON, Oct 7 (Reuters) — A blockchain linked to Binance, the world’s largest cryp­to exchange, has been hit by a $570 mil­lion hack, a Binance spokesper­son said on Fri­day, the lat­est in a series of hacks to hit the cryp­to sec­tor this year.

Binance CEO Chang­peng Zhao said in a tweet that tokens were stolen from a blockchain “bridge” used in the BNB Chain, which was known as Binance Smart Chain until Feb­ru­ary. Blockchain bridges are tools used to trans­fer cryp­tocur­ren­cies between dif­fer­ent applications.

Zhao said the hack­ers stole around $100 mil­lion worth of cryp­to. BNB Chain lat­er said in a blog post that a total of 2 mil­lion of the cryp­tocur­ren­cy BNB — worth around $570 mil­lion — was with­drawn by the hacker.

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The Binance spokesper­son said in emailed com­ments that “the major­i­ty” of the BNB remained in the hack­er’s dig­i­tal wal­let address, while about $100 mil­lion worth was “unre­cov­ered”.

Blockchain bridges have increas­ing­ly become the tar­get of thefts, which have long plagued the cryp­to sector.

BNB Chain sup­ports the BNB cryp­tocur­ren­cy, for­mer­ly known as Binance Coin, which is the world’s fifth-largest token with a mar­ket val­ue of some $46 bil­lion, accord­ing to CoinGecko data.

Some $2 bil­lion worth of cryp­tocur­ren­cy has been stolen in 13 dif­fer­ent bridge hacks, most­ly this year, cryp­to ana­lyt­ics firm Chainal­y­sis said in August.

In March, hack­ers stole around $615 mil­lion from Ronin Bridge, used to trans­fer cryp­to in and out of the game Axie Infin­i­ty, in one of the largest cryp­to heists on record. The Unit­ed States linked North Kore­an hack­ers to the theft.

BNB Chain sus­pend­ed its blockchain for sev­er­al hours before resum­ing at around 0630 GMT, it said in a tweet.

It said in its blog post that BNB Chain was “able to stop the inci­dent from spread­ing” by con­tact­ing the blockchain’s “val­ida­tors,” — enti­ties or indi­vid­u­als who ver­i­fy blockchain trans­ac­tions. BNB Chain said there are 44 val­ida­tors across sev­er­al dif­fer­ent time zones, with­out giv­ing fur­ther details.

BNB Chain said it would intro­duce a new “gov­er­nance mech­a­nism” to counter future hacks, as well as to expand the num­ber of validators.

On the Binance web­site, BNB Chain is described as a “com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven, open-sourced and decen­tral­ized ecosystem”.

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Report­ing by Eliz­a­beth How­croft; Edit­ing by Tom Wil­son, Ana Nico­laci da Cos­ta and Louise Heavens

Our Stan­dards: The Thom­son Reuters Trust Principles.

Eliz­a­beth Howcroft

Thom­son Reuters

Reports on the inter­sec­tion of finance and tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing cryp­tocur­ren­cies, NFTs, vir­tu­al worlds and the mon­ey dri­ving “Web3”.

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