The latest victims of financial theft and hacking is Web3 infrastructure provider . In a series tweets, the BNB Chain-Based DeFi protocol confirmed that it was hacked and that six quadrillion tokens were stolen by the attacker. Ankr Rewards Bearing Stake/aBNBc was the stolen crypto.
Incident Details
Lookomchain is an on-chain analytics company that stated the hacking took place on Friday and that $10 million in crypto (USDC) coins were stolen. Hacker was able to create numerous Ankr Rewards Bearing Staked BNB tokens (aBNBc), which Blockchain security company PeckShield can use as a mint bug. The token’s value plummeted by at least 100 percent after the attack.
Shortly after the attack, Binance’s crypto exchange stopped accepting withdrawals . Arkham, a crypto intel company stated that an attacker’s wallet address was tied to Ankr. Arkham believes that there is a possibility for an insider job.
Ankr spokesperson stated that the hackers used a compromised security key to hack into Ankr. PeckShield stated that the private key hack enabled an attacker to mint infinite tokens. PeckShield noted that the key was replaced and swapped. Developers are given private keys that can be used to modify and manage smart contracts.
Ankr Statement
Ankr about this incident. He claimed that all its underlying assets are secure at the moment and all infrastructure services have not been affected. Ankr confirmed that it had urged all exchanges not to trade immediately after the exploitation its aBNB token.
Protocol users are asked to cease trading in aBNB. Liquidity providers must remove liquidity from DEXes, but keep the aBNBc.
Ankr also claims it has been in contact with DEXes, and that tokens will be reissued after an assessment of the situation. The protocol believes it to be an inside job, and has devised a compensation plan for those affected.
What happened to stolen funds?
PeckShield’s Tweet indicates that some hackers transferred funds to Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency tumbler. In August 2022, by the US government.
Celer and deBridgeGate helped bridge a portion of the funds. They then transferred 20 trillion stolen tokens to Helio, which is a decentralized lending protocol. Then they converted them into Binance Coin, (BNB). They exchanged the BNB using crypto mixer Tornado cash for $5 million USDC. This is the equivalent of the US dollar.
