Theft has become a recurring problem in the crypto and NFT space, and Binance has become the latest victim of a significant robbery.
The report
On Friday, a Binance spokesperson revealed that a Binance-linked blockchain was involved in a $570 million hack last Thursday.
On Thursday, the cryptocurrency exchange platform tweeted that Binance had temporarily suspended BNB Smart Chain, its blockchain network.
The company claimed that the action was the result of irregular activity.
On Friday, Binance released a statement claiming that hackers stole two million BNB cryptocurrency tokens, which were worth $ 570 million at the time.
Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, initially tweeted that about $100 million worth of cryptocurrencies had been stolen.
On Thursday, he tweeted:
“Your funds are safe. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
According to Binance, tokens worth $100 million remain “unrecovered” and have been removed from the chain by the hacker.
At the moment, the remaining funds of the BNB chain are being frozen.
The hack
The big heist was carried out when the hackers targeted what is known in the crypto space as a cross-chain bridge.
Recently, bridges have become the target of most hackers.
Bridges are the infrastructure that allows users to exchange crypto assets on different blockchains.
Their services usually hold large reserves of various coins.
This puts coin reserves at the center of the hackers’ radar.
According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, coin reserves have made blockchain bridges prime targets for theft.
Theft
Elliptic reports that about $1.83 billion was stolen from bridges in August, with the majority ($1.21 billion) in 2022.
Binance was not alone as others experienced major thefts in 2022.
Other losses include $190 million stolen from cryptocurrency bridge provider Nomad in August.
In June, California-based Harmony announced a loss of $100 million at the end of June.
Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge lost $625 million in March.
Effects of the Binance hack
The latest hack caused the BNB blockchain to go offline for about nine hours.
BNB made a corporate post saying that the chain’s ecosystem contacted the chain’s validators to prevent the incident from spreading further.
Chain validators are people who verify that transactions on the blockchain are legitimate.
According to a tweet from the company, the channel went back online around 2:30 a.m. ET.
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