BNB Chain Pauses Activity After Attacker Makes Off With $100-$110M in BNB

BNB Chain assured users that their funds were safe after the exploit caused considerable concern in the community.
BSCN
October 7, 2022
An exploit in the BSC Token Hub cross-chain bridge caused BNB Chain to pause late Thursday after an attacker nearly made off with $500 million worth of BNB. User funds remained safe as the attacker did not steal existing $BNB and instead created new tokens through an exploit.
An exploit on a cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, resulted in extra BNB. We have asked all validators to temporarily suspend BSC. The issue is contained now. Your funds are safe. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates accordingly.
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) October 6, 2022
2 million BNB tokens were initially targeted by the attacker when they exploited the BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) to BNB Chain (BEP20) bridge to create and then send themselves 1 million BNB twice.
The attacker evidently didn’t move the tokens off-chain fast enough, however, as BNB Chain froze all activity before the bulk of the tokens could be moved. Reports from researchers indicate that the attack began just after 6:30pm UTC.
Initial estimates are that somewhere between $100 to $110 million worth of tokens were moved to Ethereum, Avalanche, Fantom, and other chains, while about $400 million remained on BSC. BNB Chain updated the community saying that out of this sum, around $7 million had been successfully frozen.
The #BSC Bridge Hacks
— Ancilia, Inc. (@AnciliaInc) October 6, 2022
1/ Our first alert on 2022-10-06 18:37:59.181498, which shows the hacker drain a contract's fund over 99% and over $100M USD, from
0x489a8756c18c0b8b24ec2a2b9ff3d4d447f79bechttps://t.co/Jz3GUKUwmAhttps://t.co/srXrz3sHeD"
The hacker poorly executed the attack according to reports from community researchers on Twitter.
Unless they really wanted to long $ETH or pump DeFi markets, seems like a whitehat bounty could've been better r/r. They might only walk away with <20%
— GREEN JEFF (The Bread #9) (@jeffthedunker) October 6, 2022
The price of $BNB was impacted quickly by the attack, dropping by nearly 5% from $294 to $280 USD before recovering slightly to $286 as of writing.
BSC News is closely monitoring this situation and will be providing updates as more information is revealed.
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