The event has forced the BNB Blockchain to tweet a warning about “irregular activity”.
BNB has apparently been stolen in an alleged hack. The exploit, rumored to be worth around $600 million, has forced the BNB (BSC) Blockchain to tweet a warning about “irregular activity”.
The tweet on the microblogging site reported the following: “Due to irregular activity, we are temporarily pausing BSC. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates here. Thanks for your patience and understanding.”
Binance Coin Hack
The price of BNB has fallen by 3.7% when news of the exploit broke today.
The exact type of theft is currently uncertain. However, the rumor mill is working overtime on Twitter. Many enthusiasts attribute the hack to an “inside job” and say that the BNB was stolen from a smart contract.
Twitter amateur sleuths have also said that stablecoin Tether has blacklisted the suspicious address. This could suggest that Binance suspects a hack for something more harmless.
Binance has tried to calm fears saying: “To confirm, we have suspended BSC after having determined a possible exploit. All systems are now contained and we are immediately investigating the potential vulnerability. We know that the Community will assist and help to freeze any transfer. All funds are safe.”
On-chain data highlights two withdrawals of 1 million BSC tokens. It appears that the hacker took the crypto assets through swaps, bridges, and cross-chain loans.
According to Blockchain security firm SlowMist, the exploit allowed cybercriminals to steal more than $570 million in digital assets, including Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Fantom, Arbitrum, and Optimism.
A tweet by SlowMist adds that, “The hacker is now trying to spread the funds to every network to launder the funds.”
It is worth noting that this is not the first time there is a major hack affecting Binance. Back in 2019, Binance was hacked for roughly $40 million, with the hacker stealing roughly 7,000 Bitcoins from the exchange. These funds were never recovered, but the company covered customer losses.
The Alleged Hack and the Issue of Decentralization
The alleged exploit of BNB has once again raised the issue of centralized finance versus decentralized finance.
Regarding this issue, Blockchain developer @0xfoobar tweted that, “The attacker is pouring funds through pools of liquidity and using all the bridges they can to reach more secure chains,” adding that there was “complete chaos on the chain.”
The developer later posted a screenshot of a dashboard showing the distribution of funds, with the question, “Is this decentralization?”
The hack impacting Binance Coin has raised a debate on social media regarding decentralization, given that Binance could contact its validator network and get a response.
Related to this, Dr. Craig S. Wright, Bitcoin creator, has expressed his criticism against BNB Chain as being “not decentralized in any way” and “distributed, not centralized.” This means that BNC behaves more like a shareholder database, with approved validators who are also stakers who vote in large amounts and operate independently.
By Audy Castaneda
