By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- Hackers stole around $570 million worth of cryptocurrency from a bridge linking to Binance's blockchain network, the crypto exchange confirmed on Friday.
It's the latest in a series of attacks targeting so-called 'bridges', which allow crypto investors to transfer assets from one blockchain network to another without having to convert their assets back into fiat currency. That allows users to avoid onerous transaction fees.
The exploit was made possible by a bug in the bridge's smart contract (which allows deals to settle automatically without human intervention), allowing the hackers to fake transactions and send money back to their own wallet.
Over $2 billion had been stolen from bridge protocols in the first seven months of 2022 alone, research firm Chainalysis said in August.
The hackers managed to lift 2 million BNB tokens from the network, Binance’s BNB Chain said in a blog post on Friday.
While remedial work ensured that most of the stolen funds remain trapped in the wallet of the actors behind the exploit, Binance confirmed that around $100 million worth of tokens was still "unrecovered" after a temporary suspension of the network overnight.
The remedial upgrade required contacting the blockchain's 44 "validators" - entities or individuals who verify blockchain transactions - around the world, BNB Chain said in its blog post.
The news pushed Binance's BNB coin down by some 3.7% against the dollar in Friday's trading.