Ankr boss: The firm will restore lost funds after hack
Ankr has become the latest cryptocurrency-related firm to be hacked.
The Web3 infrastructure provider tweeted Thursday (December 1): “Our aBNB token has been exploited and we are currently working with exchanges to immediately halt trading.”
Our aBNB token has been exploited and we are currently working with exchanges to immediately halt trading.
— Ankr (@ankr) 2 December 2022
In a thread launched on Friday (December 2), Ankr issued an update saying that a hacker had compromised a deployer’s private key and drained $5 million, adding that decentralized exchanges (DEX) quickly halted trading of aBNB tokens.
“We are grateful to our community of DEXs, exchanges, and protocols that all helped us end the exploit,” Ankr said in the thread. “We will use reserves to compensate liquidity providers for the aBNBc pools.”
On a Friday blog postsAnkr Co-founder and managing director Chandler sang wrote: “Hack and exploits by bad actors like this are an unfortunate possibility in Web3, even with all the attention to detail in security processes – but we were well prepared. Unlike previous events in the space this year, we’re doing the right thing by our community and ensures that this is taken care of immediately with lost funds restored.”
Bloomberg reported on Friday that the aBNBc token, which had traded near $300 a day earlier, is now worthless.
Part of the token’s value came from its link to Binance Coin, which gave holders of that coin ways to make money, according to the report.
Among the firms that helped stop the theft was Binance.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, tweeted during the hack: “Binance stopped withdrawals a few [hours] since. Also refreeze [$3 million] that hackers [moved] to our CEX.”
Possible hacks on Ankr and Hay. Initial analysis is that the developer’s private key was hacked, and the hacker updated the smart contract to a more malicious one. Binance stopped withdrawals a few hours ago. Also froze about $3 million that hackers move to our CEX.
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) 2 December 2022
Ankr joins a long list of companies to be hacked.
During the first seven months of the year, the losses from crypto hacks added up to $1.9 billion — a 60% increase from the $1.2 billion in losses recorded at the same time in 2021, Chainalysis said in August.
Among the events that have occurred since then was a loss of about $160 million digital assets to a theft by hackers that victimized cryptocurrency trader Wintermute in September.
Also in September, multi-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Kyber Network said it was removing one attack vector which was used in an exploit that saw $265,000 stolen.
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