Binance Temporarily Pauses Withdrawals Post Ankr Hack

• The hacker used aBNBc token’s smart contract to generate a limitless supply of the token.
• Since the assault, the token’s price has dropped 99.5%.

As a result of the recent assault on Ankr, Binance has temporarily suspended withdrawals, as revealed by CEO Changpeng Zhao. Staking tokens on a proof-of-stake network is a breeze with Ankr since the service acts as a distributed node operator, eliminating the need for customers to invest in hardware.

The CEO stated:

“Possible hacks on Ankr and Hay. Initial analysis is developer private key was hacked, and the hacker updated the smart contract to a more malicious one. Binance paused withdrawals a few hrs ago. Also froze about $3m that hackers move to our CEX.”

Compensation Plan Proposed

It was compromised in the wee hours of Friday morning, with the hacker using the aBNBc token’s smart contract to generate a limitless supply of the token. In the context of Ankr, this coin represents a staked version of Binance’s BNB token. Since the assault, the token’s price has dropped 99.5%, as measured by CoinGecko.

It is unknown how many tokens were minted, while some estimates put the figure as high as 60 trillion aBNBc tokens. Rapidly, the attacker started bridging USDC off BSC, first by switching to the Ethereum chain using deBridge and then by transferring 900 BNB to Tornado Cash.

They started transferring several of these tokens from the Binance Smart Chain to Ethereum after exchanging them for the stablecoin USDC. According to the Ankr team, almost $5 million worth of BNB was stolen from them. In addition, a plan to compensate those who lost out was proposed, with the reissuing of a new token called ankrBNB.

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