This year the crypto market just can’t take a break from repeated falls as many companies are facing similar fate.
On Friday, the hacking incident affected a number of tokens which is investigating by the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance. A key known as a private key that is used to encrypt and decrypt data had been hacked, according to the founder and CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao.
“Initial analysis is developer private key was hacked, and the hacker updated the smart contract to a more malicious one,” Zhao said on Twitter, adding that the Ankr and Hay tokens were affected.
The founder of the company tweeted that a few hours ago the Binance Company stopped withdrawals. According to Binance, the hacks targeted Ankr’s loyalty token aBNBc which the CEO appeared to be referring to. Hay is a stablecoin, a type of cryptocurrency that is pegged to another asset.
Smart contracts are a program which is stored on a blockchain-based platform (such as Ethereum) and when the predetermined condition is met then it executes all or a part of the agreement.
“A hacker managed to exploit a vulnerability in the code of aBNBc that allowed them to mint 6 quadrillion tokens, which was converted into BNB tokens [Binance’s own coin] and transferred through the crypto mixer platform Tornado Cash,” said Matt Hussey, who writes a crypto newsletter called Zero Knowledge.
“It’s another example of the vulnerability in many of the contracts that power protocols and exchanges in the crypto space,” he added.
In a separate tweet, Binance reassured its users by saying that “this is not an attack” against the company, and that its team was working to investigate.
Ankr, meanwhile, said on Twitter, that it is “committed to compensating affected users.”
“The team at Ankr has assessed the damage and it is max 5 [million US dollars] worth of BNB,” it said.
Binance did not instantly respond to a request for additional input.
As the crypto exchange, FTX fell, it unleashed financial contagion because of this most digital assets industries are struggling. At the same time, hackers found an opportunity to attack during this serious situation.
In October, Chainalysis a Blockchain analytics firm said that the crypto industry with more than $3 billion had been hacked across 125 cyber attacks in the first ten months of the year and 2022 was on the path to being a record year for such exploits.