Binance pauses withdrawals following Ankr $5 million hack

The hacker used the aBNBc token’s smart contract to generate an endless supply of Ankr token.

Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, revealed that withdrawals associated with a recent attack on Ankr had been halted. Within an hour of the attack, the BNB Chain-based decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol Ankr acknowledged this on Twitter and further explained that it had been victim of a roughly $5 million hack.

The BNB token from Binance, which is used to gain incentives on Ankr, is represented by this token. Uncertainty surrounds the quantity of tokens produced, however some reports claim that they could have produced up to 60 trillion aBNBc tokens. Since the attack, the token’s price has fallen 99.5%.

The Crypto exchange is currently looking into this incident that has hit several crypto coins. A private key, which is used to encrypt or decrypt data, has been compromised, according to the company’s founder Zhao.

He commented saying “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 hours ago. Also froze about $3m that hackers move to our CEX.”

Protocol DeFi Ankr indicated that all underlying assets on Ankr Staking are safe at this time, and all infrastructure services are unaffected, and that it will compensate the users who were negatively affected by the $5 million exploit that took place on its platform earlier on Friday.

“We will take a snapshot and reissue ankrBNB to all valid aBNBc holders before the exploit. The ankrBNB token will continue to be redeemable, while aBNBc and aBNBb will no longer be redeemable,” Ankr said in a tweet after the exploit.

The alleged hack occurs while the market for digital assets is reeling from the financial fallout caused by the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.