Binance freezes $3M due to Ankr hack

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Binance CEO announced that the exchange has frozen approximately $3 million worth of assets obtained by hackers as a result of the Ankr exploit.

DeFi Ankr Protocolsuffered a large-scale hack, during which the attacker was able to issue 20 trillion aBNBc tokens. The hacker then exchanged part of the funds for 5 million USDC using the decentralized exchange Uniswap, the Tornado Cash mixer, and various cross-chain bridges.

Beosin, a company that studies blockchain security issues, wrote
tweeted that the attack was likely caused bycompromise of the private key because the developer changed the address of the implementation contract before the attack. The attacker then called the mintApprovedTo function, which allowed anyone to mint an unlimited number of tokens.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said that the exchange was able to block about $3 million received by hackers as a result of the Ankr hack.

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Possible hacks on Ankr and Hay.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.

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) December 2, 2022

Replying to comments in a Twitter threadusers that hackers could take possession of assets worth five times the amount blocked, the head of Binance announced his readiness to involve an independent auditor in the audit.

Earlier, the Binance cryptocurrency exchange reported
on concluding a cooperation agreement with Mazars, which will be the auditor of the new Proof-of-Reserve (PoR) system.