Initial token movements suggested that an attacker targeted up to two million BSC tokens late on Thursday, although actual losses may be substantially lower. BNB Chain stated in a tweet that $7 million had already been frozen despite estimating that $100 to $110 million in assets had been removed from the chain.
The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange's blockchain, Binance Smart Chain, put the brakes on operations on Thursday following what it called a "potential exploit" that on-chain data revealed would have targeted hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency.
The fact that such a tiny amount of assets were actually taken highlights the benefit of BNB's decision to break the chain rather than risk having more assets escape. Blockchains are supposedly decentralized machines built to function independently of the whim of individual actors; you can't just turn them off.
BSC acknowledged that it coordinated a chain shutdown after identifying problems with the BSC Token Hub protocol, which serves as a clearinghouse for crypto transactions traveling between the interconnected components of the Binance-linked blockchain. It praised the quickness of the validators.
"We are humbled by the speed and collaboration from the community to freeze funds," one tweet read.
BSC's native BNB cryptocurrency, which was shaken by the threat of an assault, dropped to $280.40 from $293.10 following a sleepy day of trade, according to CoinMarketCap, which Binance owns.
On-chain data reveals that an attacker who stole cryptocurrency using cross-chain swaps, bridges and borrows made two large withdrawals of 1 million BSC tokens from the BSC token hub this afternoon. However, BNB's Twitter stated that it will "help halt any transfers" and assured users that "all funds are safe."
The major stablecoin supplier, Tether, has blacklisted the offending address, according to Twitter sleuths, indicating that the company believes the movement of tokens was caused by an attack rather than anything more harmless.
The situation was summarized on the Green Jeff Capital Twitter account. At the conclusion of the thread, he indicated that the attackers might ultimately receive roughly $100 million.
"The attacker's next moves will probably pull [ethereum] out of bridges back to mainnet and then [Tornado Cash]. They have around $45 million in [ethereum] on mainnet, another $20 million in bridges (Avalanche and Fantom official)," Green Jeff tweeted. "With overcollateralized [ethereum] borrows, they may get $100mm max."
Some Redditors questioned the accuracy of the data from the Reddit announcement of the Bnb Smart Chain hack, and others criticized the decentralization of the BNB chain. Since the Bnb Smart Chain bridge hack was discovered, the topic of discussion on social media platforms like Reddit and Twitter has been the exploit.
