Binance Smart Chain – The blockchain made by the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, and home to its native token BNB, has seen an exploit on their cross-chain bridge resulting in a loss of 2 million BNB tokens or roughly $568 million (USD).
The facts
- The official Binance Twitter account claims BNB chain is under maintenance, with deposits and withdrawals via BNB currently suspended.
- The official BNB chain states activity on the Binance Smart Chain is currently paused due to a “potential exploit” and says “all funds are safe.”
- Blockchain security and data analytics company Peckshield reported two reward claims worth 1M BNB, each worth around $586M.
- CEO of Binance – Changpeng “CZ” Zhao confirms the exploit as a cross-chain bridge hack on the BSC Token Hub – the bridge between BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) and BNB Chain (BEP20 or BSC).
- BNB is down 4% since the event took place, according to data from coingecko.
How it happened
Paradigm researcher and Twitter user @samczsun was quick to detail the events.
“In summary, there was a bug in the way that the Binance Bridge verified proofs which could have allowed attackers to forge arbitrary messages. Fortunately, the attacker here only forged two messages, but the damage could have been far worse.”
More detailed thread:
