The world's biggest crypto exchange Binance lost $100 million in hack

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, was hacked, and around $100 million of Binance Coins (BNB) were stolen, the CEO of Binance, Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, tweeted Friday morning.

Hacked through an exploit on a cross-chain bridge

"An exploit on a cross-chain bridge, BSC Token Hub, resulted in extra BNB. We have asked all validators to temporarily suspend BSC. The issue is contained now. Your funds are safe. We apologize for the inconvenience and will provide further updates accordingly," Zhao wrote on Twitter.

The hack is expected to have affected $100 million in BNBs, about "a quarter of the last BNB burn," Zhao wrote in a separate tweet.

About two hours before Zhao's tweet, the official Binance Twitter account stated that BNB Chain was under maintenance. "We will suspend all deposits and withdrawals via the BNB chain temporarily until there are further updates," Binance wrote.

In January of 2020, hackers stole approximately $80 million in cryptocurrency by exploiting a bug on the Qubit Finance platform that lets users convert one form of digital currency into another.

In March of the same year, the Ronin Network announced that hackers had stolen roughly $625 million in cryptocurrency from its blockchain and the play-to-earn Axie Infinity video game network that operates on top of it. The hackers got away with approximately 173,600 of the very popular ether and 25.5 million of USDC, a cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar.

The incident, at the time, was believed to be the biggest theft of cryptocurrency ever.

In April of 2022, cyber actors, such as the Lazarus Group and APT38 from North Korea, were confirmed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to be involved in the $600-million crypto-heist that took place in March.

The North Korean cyber criminals were reported to have also made away with over $400 million in 2021 alone.

Almost $1 billion in crypto lost

Just last month, TradingPlatform.com reported that DeFi protocols lost almost $1 billion in crypto to North Korea-linked hacking groups.

Edith Reads, an analyst with the organization, said at the time in a statement, “There has been a series of attacks on DeFi platforms. The attacks are well organized and coordinated. However, there are measures in place by different players in the crypto space to overcome this. More than $30 million in stolen crypto has been recovered from North Korean hackers, which gives hope. It is a win for the crypto enthusiast. It will boost confidence among crypto investors and even attract those with reservations about crypto security.”

All in all, these events amount to significant losses for crypto communities. This begs the question: why haven’t crypto providers come up with better security measures? Clearly, the sector has advanced enough to provide easy and quick service; should cybersecurity not be part of its plans?