Binance confirms $100 million loss in a bridge hack

Cryptocurrency trading platform called Binance confirmed that it lost at least $100 million to hackers. Due to a vulnerability affecting the BSC Token Hub cross-chain bridge, the Binance blockchain, also known as BNB Chain and Binance Smart Chain, was forced to halt transactions and fund transfers.

The hack was performed on a cross-chain bridge. Tools called cross-chain bridges make it possible to move tokens from one blockchain to another. The organizations or people who validate network transactions are known as network validators.

According to a Chainalysis report in August 2022, hackers have increasingly targeted cross-chain bridges, with some $2bn stolen in 13 different hacks.

The incident was corroborated by Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao via a tweet. According to him, “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.”

Due to the vulnerability in the BSC Token Hub bridge, the attacker was able to forge messages, enabling them to mint new BNB tokens. Since the stolen tokens were not preexisting tokens taken from wallets, no user funds were impacted.

Changpeng Zhao said that the current impact estimate was around $100m USD equivalent, about a quarter of the last BNB burn.