Market Analysis Report (07 Oct 2022)

The BNB Chain, the blockchain of Binance’s native BNB token, has been halted over an exploit to its cross-chain bridge that saw attackers make off with an estimated $100 million worth of cryptocurrency.

The exploit was confirmed by the official Twitter account of the BNB Chain, which announced a temporary halt over “irregular activity” on the network. It soon added that the halt was over the exploit.

Later on, a BNB Chain developer updated the community on Reddit, pointing out that initial estimates pointed to a $100 to $110 million exploit, with roughly $7 million in crypto frozen. BNB Chain said the exploit, which was perpetrated on the BSC Token Hub, led to the creation of “extra BNB.”

BNB Chain reassured the public that its systems are contained and user funds are safe while it investigates the vulnerability. Twitter sleuths found the attackers initially managed to claim one million BNB through the token hub, before moving the funds to DeFi platform Venus Protocol.

The attacker then borrowed $150 million worth of stablecoins using the BNB as collateral, and used cross-chain bridges to swap tokens for Ether (ETH), Fantom (FTM), and Polygon (MATIC) before the BNB chain was paused. The attacker exploited the bridge twice for one million BNB each time, and is estimated to have roughly $400 million in crypto frozen on the BNB Chain.