Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Binance Bridge Hit by $560 Million Hack

Hackers have exploited a cross-chain bridge to divert more than $560 million worth of cryptocurrency from Binance Bridge.

Operating on the Binance Coins (BNB) Smart Chain, Binance Bridge is a blockchain bridge designed to help with the transfer of information and assets between blockchains.

Hackers have exploited a cross-chain bridge to divert more than $560 million worth of cryptocurrency from Binance Bridge.

Operating on the Binance Coins (BNB) Smart Chain, Binance Bridge is a blockchain bridge designed to help with the transfer of information and assets between blockchains.

On Thursday, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced on Twitter that hackers exploited a vulnerability in the BSC (BNB Chain) Token Hub cross-chain bridge (blockchain bridge).

“An exploit on a cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, resulted in extra BNB. We have asked all validators to temporarily suspend BSC. The issue is contained now. Your funds are safe. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates accordingly,” he said.

According to Zhao, the overall impact of the hack is of around $100 million worth of BNB. However, the attackers’ wallet reportedly received two transactions of 1,000,000 BNB each, worth a total of more than $560 million.

Soon after, the hackers started transferring funds to other cryptocurrency wallets, including over $50 million to Etherium and roughly the same amount to Fantom.

In addition to acknowledging the hack, Binance announced that it worked with validators to temporarily suspend BSC, to freeze transfers. The cryptocurrency trading platform says that it has already recovered some of the stolen funds.

“We have asked all validators to temporarily suspend BSC. The issue is contained now. Your funds are safe. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates accordingly,” Binance said in a Reddit post.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

“Initial estimates for funds taken off BSC are between $100M – $110M. However, thanks to the community and our internal and external security partners, an estimated $7M has already been frozen,” the platform said.

Binance has launched an investigation into the incident, but has not provided details on how the hack has happened. A fix has been rolled out to address the exploit in BSC.

Threat actors have increasingly targeted blockchain bridges. Victims include Nomad, ($200 million losses), Horizon ($100 million), Ronin Validator ($600 million), and Wormhole ($300 million).

Related: Over $300 Million in Cryptocurrency Stolen in Wormhole Hack

Related: Hackers Steal Over $600M in Major Crypto Heist

Related: Nearly $200 Million Stolen From Cryptocurrency Bridge Nomad

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Artificial Intelligence

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.