Binance

A wake-up call for crypto security after an unprecedented $27m attack on Binance-affiliated wallet

It has been alleged that a hacker took $27 million in cryptocurrency from a wallet linked to Binance. CoinDesk reported on Monday, November 13, that the monies that were taken from the tether exchange were first converted to ether and then moved to other exchanges and bridges to bitcoin via the THORChain bridge.

The report, which referenced on-chain data, stated that in 2019, the victim's wallet had received ether from the Binance deployer through two different wallets. According to the article, smart contracts are made using a deployer wallet. The deployer wallet from Binance has not been used in almost three years.

According to a Binance spokeswoman quoted in the story, "The user made a withdrawal from Binance, which was valid and authorized on our platform." Sadly, there was hacked information in the DeFi wallet that accepted the withdrawal. Although we have no control over this, Binance's security team is investigating, and we will help out where we can.

According to the research, THORchain has been the target of many well-publicized attacks this year. For instance, hackers concealed the $35 million theft from Atomic Wallet in June by using the network. Following a string of trades connected to the FTX breach from the previous year, THORSwap entered maintenance mode in October.

The original theft, which totaled about $372 million, took place on November 11, 2022, a few hours after FTX filed for bankruptcy. About $4 million of the stolen cryptocurrency reappeared last month, with part of it traveling through the THORchain router, which enables users to transfer tokens between blockchains.

The most recent hack comes after a $200 million hack that caused the digital asset transaction network Mixin to stop accepting deposits and withdrawals in September. Decentralized finance (DeFi) networks suffered significant hacking attacks last year. DeFi is a kind of financial technology that replaces conventional financial intermediaries and trust mechanisms with peer-to-peer protocols and smart contracts. Distributed ledger technology includes blockchains that facilitate cryptocurrency transactions.

In 2022, DeFi protocols and platforms experienced the most breaches, accounting for 82.1% of all assets taken, or $3.1 billion. With 64% of the damages incurred by DeFi actors coming via cross-chain bridge protocols, that percentage increased from 73.3% in 2021.