Binance hit with $570 million BNB token hack

Binance has confirmed that hackers have stolen approximately $110 million from a breach on the Binance blockchain. The blockchain, also known as BNB Chain and Binance Smart Chain, was locked down after a total of 2 million BNB, worth about $570 million, were initially withdrawn from the hacker. Ultimately, only about $110 million was stolen because the majority of the stolen tokens couldn’t be transferred following a suspension of the BNB Chain.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao confirmed the hack on his Twitter:

After the brief suspension of the BNB Chain, Binance confirms in a blog post by the BNB Chain team that the blockchain is back up and running.

Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, per CNBC.

The rare attack was a successful vulnerability exploit of the BSC Token Hub cross-chain bridge. These bridges are designed to facilitate token transactions from one blockchain to another.

According to TechCrunch, “the hacker was able to forge messages, enabling them to mint new BNB tokens.” Since the tokens were newly minted, existing customers and wallets were not affected by this breach.

While still rare, cross-chain bridge hacks are becoming more common within the past year, according to TechCrunch. In August, hackers were able to steal $190 million worth of crypto from the Nomad cross-chain bridge. And according to Chainalysis, $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency has been stolen in cross-chain bridge hacks in 2022 alone.