Theft has become a recurring issue in the crypto and NFT space, and Binance has become the latest victim of a major heist.
The report
On Friday, a Binance spokesperson announced that a Binance-connected blockchain was involved in a $570 million hack last Thursday.
On Thursday, the cryptocurrency exchange tweeted that Binance had temporarily suspended BNB Smart Chain, its blockchain network.
The company claimed the action was the result of improper activity.
On Friday, Binance released a statement claiming that hackers stole two million BNB cryptocurrency tokens, which were valued at $570 million at the time.
Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, first tweeted that about $100 million worth of cryptocurrencies had been stolen. On Thursday, he tweeted:
“Your funds are safe. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
According to Binance, tokens worth $100 million remain “unrecovered” and have been removed from the chain by the hacker.
At the moment, the remaining assets of the BNB chain are frozen.
The hack
The significant heist was carried out when hackers targeted what is known in the crypto space as a cross-chain bridge.
Recently, bridges have become the targets of most hackers.
Bridges are the infrastructure that allows users to exchange crypto assets across different blockchains.
Their services usually have large reserves of various currencies.
This puts coin reserves at the center of the hacker radar.
Coin reserves have made blockchain bridges prime targets for theft, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.
Theft
Elliptic reports that about $1.83 billion was stolen from bridges in August, most of it ($1.21 billion) stolen in 2022.
Binance wasn’t alone, as others witnessed major thefts in 2022.
Other losses include $190 million stolen by cryptocurrency bridge provider Nomad in August.
In June, California-based Harmony announced a $100 million loss in late June.
Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge lost $625 million in March.
Effects of the Binance hack
The latest hack rendered the BNB blockchain offline for about nine hours.
BNB published a corporate article stating that the chain’s ecosystem had contacted the chain’s investigators to prevent the incident from spreading further.
Chain validators are people who verify that transactions on the blockchain are legitimate.
According to a tweet from the company, the channel came back online around 2:30 p.m. ET.
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