By
Godfrey Benjamin
July 2nd, 2024
The exploit comes seven days after Gala Games, one of the prominent players in the industry, suffered a malicious security attack that led to the loss of $23 million of users’ assets.
BNB Chain has become the latest victim of a cybersecurity exploit, with hackers netting over $80,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) from the protocol. The incident was detected by blockchain security firm Cyvers. The on-chain security company announced on the social media platform X that the attackers might be white-hat hackers testing for loopholes on the BNB Chain, as the attack involved multiple BTC transactions.
The hacker received funds from the sanctioned crypto mixer Tornado Cash for the operation. However, Cyvers also disclosed that the exploiters interacted with Binance during the attack, which could indicate that the incident was conducted by ethical hackers looking for vulnerabilities on the blockchain.
Speculations and Future Concerns
While the amount lost is relatively small compared to typical losses in the crypto market, it is speculated that the attacker may have been testing the waters, potentially planning more significant attacks in the future.
The exploit comes seven days after Gala Games, one of the prominent players in the industry, suffered a malicious security attack that led to the loss of $23 million of users’ assets. The attack represents one of the largest exploits in the crypto space this month.
On May 20, the company’s chief executive officer Eric Schiermeyer blamed the firm’s “messed up internal control” for the exploit.
“We messed up our internal controls. This shouldn’t have happened, and we are taking steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” he wrote on X.
Gala Games’ security team has since fixed the bug, and the perpetrators were caught after returning almost all the stolen funds to the company. The firm announced Monday that it worked with Binance and law enforcement to apprehend the criminals.
Multiple Exploits Hit Crypto Market in 2024
These two incidents are not the only exploits that have occurred in the crypto market this year. This month alone has seen decentralized platform YON Finance lose around 190 BNB worth approximately $118K to hackers.
Additionally, on May 14, hackers exploited vulnerabilities on the crypto exchange Rain, resulting in a loss of $14.8 million.
According to data from blockchain security firm Immunefi, the first three months of 2024 saw a total of 32 hacks across various sectors of the crypto economy. These incidents resulted in the loss of about $200 million in virtual assets.
The company revealed the attacks represent a 15% increase compared to the same period last year.
The Ethereum blockchain suffered the most during this period, with 12 attacks accounting for over 85% of the total value lost in Q1. Following Ethereum, the Bitcoin network and Binance’s BNB Chain each experienced one major exploit, contributing significantly to the total value lost in the first quarter.