In a surprising update, Binance Chain was exploited in the early trading hours where-in the hacker drew 2 million BNB tokens from a BNB whale address. Following a major security breach this year, Binance Chain quickly halted its operations, asking the validators to halt the transactions.
However, the validators quickly coordinated to revive the Binance Chain as the earliest by stopping the hacker account from acting & disabling the cross-chain communication between BNB Beacon Chain & BNB Smart Chain. Furthermore, all the node runners were asked to upgrade to the newer version of v1.1.15.
The Binance Chain finally resumed its operations after an 8-hour brawl.
📢BNB Smart Chain (BSC) is running ok from 20+ mins ago.
The validators are confirming their status and the community infrastructure are upgrading as well.
— BNB Chain (@BNBCHAIN) October 7, 2022
According to initial estimates, the hackers appear to have gotten away with nearly $100 to $110 million in funds. While the initial reports suggests that over 2 million BNB tokens were compromised, which equalled to well over $500 million, Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao reassured users that their funds are safe and only around $100 million were impacted. But what happened all of a sudden? How did the hacker manage to squeeze out the funds?
The current impact estimate is around $100m USD equvilent, about a quarter of the last BNB burn.
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) October 7, 2022
Binance Bridge Compromised!
Binance Bridge, which recently rolled out its new version 2.0, bridges the tokens between Ethereum & Binance SmartChain. According to Sam Sun, the head of security at Paradigm, the hacker somehow tricked the Binance bridge and stole 2 million BNB tokens.
It all started when @zachxbt sent me the attacker's address out of the blue. When I clicked into it, I saw an account worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Either someone had pulled off a huge rug, or there was a massive hack underway pic.twitter.com/OipdKymjFL
— samczsun (@samczsun) October 6, 2022
The hacker convinced the bridge to simply send 100 million BNB tokens initially. When it worked, the same procedure was repeated to draw an additional 100 million BNB tokens. Further, the funds stolen from the Binance Bridge were deposited into the Venus Protocol. As per SamSun, the bridge encountered a bug due to which the hacker could forge arbitrary messages.
Luckily, the hacker could only forge 2 messages and hacked half a million assets, including ETH, MATIC, BNB, etc. However, the actual estimate remained considerably lower due to the combined efforts of mitigation & containment undertaken by the community. According to the official reports, the hacker managed to transfer nearly $100 million worth of BNB.
BNB Price Slashed Following the Hack
The BNB price witnessed a significant plunge following the hack and tanked by nearly 5% to mark lows below $280. The bulls uplifted the price quickly and elevated the price beyond $285 at the moment. Presently, the price is flashing minor bullish signals, following which a notable upswing may enable a short-term bounce to hit $290.
Source: Tradingview
The BNB price, following a major slump, is trading within a bullish flag in the short term. As the price has reached the apex of the consolidation, a notable upswing appears to be fast approaching. Therefore, if the BNB price rebounds well and secures the levels around the pivotal resistance at the 50-day MA levels at $291.5, then the bearish clouds may fade away to some extent.
Else, the impact of the $100 million hack due to a bug within the Binance bridge may continue to sabotage the BNB price ahead.
Prices as of 7th October, 2022.
Additional Read: BNB Coin Price Prediction
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