WASHINGTON – Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced on Friday (October 7) that it had stolen US$570 million ($8.5 million) in the hack of the blockchain it operates, which acts as a bridge for asset transfers between networks. 117 million Singapore dollars) was stolen. Binance Smart’s attack on its chain network has highlighted a weakness in decentralized finance (DeFi), where transactions are controlled by code.
“Software code is not without bugs,” Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng said in an interview with CNBC. He stressed that no users have lost money in hacking, but said that so-called cross-chain bridges are particularly vulnerable to hacking and that the industry needs to learn from them and get better. .
In a blog post apologizing to users, Binance Smart Chain said, “We have seen a series of attacks targeting cross-chain bridge vulnerabilities. We openly share all lessons learned on how to implement more advanced security measures for
In August, blockchain research firm Chainalysis estimated that US$2 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen, mostly in 2022, in 13 cross-chain bridge attacks. infinite. In February, he had $325 million stolen from the Wormhole Network.
These exploits demonstrate how relying on code to control DeFi platforms can compromise these systems, and how decentralization can be an obstacle to quickly solving problems in an emergency. increase. The Binance Chain ecosystem is run by a community of users called validators who hold tokens and can vote on proposed code changes.
Binance Smart Chain said in a statement: “Decentralized chains are not designed to be stopped, but by contacting community validators one by one, we were able to stop the spread of the incident. “While this delayed our closure, we were able to minimize losses.”
Currently, the Binance Smart Chain community is voting on next steps, such as whether to freeze stolen funds and assign a bounty to catch hackers offering up to 10% of the value of stolen assets. do.
Vitalik Buterin, founder of the Ethereum network and the second-most-popular cryptocurrency, Ether, has been a vocal critic of cross-chain bridges, saying they have “fundamental security limitations.” . NYTIMES
https://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/binance-blockchain-hit-by-817m-hack-exposing-crypto-vulnerabilities Binance Blockchain Hit With $817 Million Hack Exposing Crypto Vulnerability