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Crypto exchange giant Binance has paused withdrawals after reports emerged that Web3 operator Ankr and destablecoin Hay were hit by a hacker in the early hours of Friday morning.
Ankr confirmed the hacker exploited Ankr’s aBNB token and said it was working with exchanges to “immediately halt trading”.
Ankr is a Web3 infrastructure provider for the BNB Chain ecosystem. At least $5 million has been allegedly stolen from the hacking.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the hacker was able to compromise a developer private key and update the smart contract code to “a more malicious one.”
He added that the exchange paused withdrawals a few hours ago at the time of tweeting (around 02:12 ET) and froze $3 million that the hackers had moved to the Binance exchange.
It’s the Wild West in crypto. Does anyone want to be sheriff?
Decentralized ecosystem BNB Chain tweeted that the hacker minted “a substantial amount” of new aBNBc and then dumped the coin in exchange for other tokens.
The HAY ‘destablecoin’, which the creator Helio Protocol describes it as a decentralized stablecoin, lost its $1 peg after attackers used it as collateral in their exploitation of Ankr.
The hacker reaped around 15.5 million Binance USD, which Zhao said was part of the $3 million freeze.
