BNB Chain is back in operation after being suspended due to a cross-chain hack

By: Dickson Arinze

October 7, 2022 1:13 PM

The BNB Chain has resumed normal operation after a brief outage caused by a cross-chain hack.

The Binance cryptocurrency exchange's native blockchain, BNB Chain, has been confirmed to be operational as of October 7 by a network update. After reports of a cross-chain exploit were verified, the network went dark for a while.

According to the blockchain, validators in the network are "confirming their status" and improving local infrastructure.

A few hours before the network suspension was lifted, BNB Chain tweeted that validators were working to shut down hacker accounts and asked node runners to update their versions.

As much as $100 million USD in cryptocurrency was lost, according to early estimates. The network later reported that seven million dollars had been successfully frozen out of an estimated seventy to eighty million dollars in stolen funds.

An official Reddit post claims that "extra BNB" was generated as a result of the breach, which had its origins on the BSC Token Hub.

Binance CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao tweeted about the incident, explaining that validators had been asked to temporarily halt BSC transactions while the network was down so that the problems could be contained.

Zhao added that all suspended user balances would be safe.

Twitter detectives dug deep into the case and the stolen funds; some estimate the hacker has frozen $400 million worth of assets on the BNB Chain system.

Tether also announced on its blog that the wallet address used by the hacker had been banned.

This breach occurred just a few weeks after BNB Chain launched a community-driven security initiative to protect its users. When it comes to fighting fraud, bad guys, and security holes, the AvengerDAO is your best bet.

Not once was the AvengerDAO mentioned in connection with the recent network incident.