Binance has suspended trading to investigate breaches that resulted in the loss of more than $500 million in crypto.
According to PC Gamer , the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance has had a large amount of tokens worth more than $570 million stolen after hackers found a vulnerability in the Binance Smart Chain bridge. The incident was so serious that the company has now suspended all trading on the exchange to investigate the theft.
CNBC reported that hackers “stealed” 2 million Binance Coin (BNB) worth about 570 million USD. Binance initially reported only $100 million in crypto stolen, but after an internal investigation, a larger amount was confirmed.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, explained on Twitter that a vulnerability in the BSC Token Hub cross-blockchain bridge created additional BNBs, which act as a place to allow users to transfer blockchain assets between platforms . Hackers used this exploit to forge transactions, essentially tricking tokens out of the network and straight into their digital wallets.
Binance previously halted the creation of new blockchains and all transactions while the company reviewed the security breach. Currently, Zhao said that the problem has been resolved and the electronic assets of users on the exchange are still safe.
Binance told CNBC that most of the stolen tokens are still in the hackers’ wallets and that $100 million has yet to be recovered.
The exchange said it will hold a “governance vote” among its participants in the next few days to address issues following the attack, such as freezing of stolen funds. or start a bounty program to find vulnerabilities and track down hackers.
The last time a crypto theft attack occurred was in 2021, when over $600 million in crypto from Poly Network was stolen and strangely the hackers returned half of it.