Key Points
- Approximately $80,000 in Bitcoin was potentially exploited on the BNB Chain through suspicious transactions.
- The attacker might be an ethical hacker, according to on-chain security firm Cyvers.
A potential exploit on the BNB Chain has resulted in the loss of around $80,000 in Bitcoin.
The sum, while smaller than typical crypto exploits, has prompted speculation about the perpetrator’s motives.
Identifying the Attacker
The identity of the exploited token contract remains unclear. However, security firm Cyvers has posited that the attacker could be a white hat hacker, a type of ethical hacker who identifies security vulnerabilities. In a post made on May 28, Cyvers stated, “The total loss is approximately $80K. The attacker received funding via TornadoCash and has also interacted with the Binance exchange, indicating a possible white hat action.”
Despite receiving funds from cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash, the exploiter also interacted with Binance, the world’s largest centralized exchange. Notably, malicious crypto hackers often avoid large centralized exchanges like Binance due to the required Know Your Customer (KYC) verification, which could potentially reveal their identities.
Recent Crypto Exploits
This potential exploit follows a recent incident involving Gala Games, which lost $23 million worth of Gala (GALA) tokens due to an issue with internal controls. However, in a surprising turn of events, the hacker returned $22.3 million worth of Ether—almost equivalent to the market value of the stolen GALA tokens—after their wallet was frozen with the stolen funds.
Earlier this month, $71 million in cryptocurrencies stolen in a wallet poisoning scam was returned to the victim. The return of the funds followed widespread attention from blockchain investigation firms. Despite this, on-chain transactions suggest that the attacker was not an ethical hacker, but rather a malicious actor who decided to return the funds due to fear of the mainstream attention.
