News Business: DeFi Protocol Ankr Exploited for Over $5M The attacker was able to mint 6 quadrillion aBNBc tokens, which they eventually turned into around 5 million USDC. #News #Business #Crypto

DeFi protocol Ankr, which called itself the first ‘node-as-a-service’ platform, has suffered a multi-million dollar exploit due to a bug in its code that allowed for unlimited minting of its token. According to security research firm PeckShield, the code behind the Ankr contract allows any user to mint an unlimited amount of the protocol’s reward-bearing staking tokens without any sort of verification. This allowed the attacker to mint six quadrillion of the aBNBc token. Since minting the quadrillions of aBNBc token, the attacker was able to swap 20 trillion of the aBNBc token for BNB, then move it to Tornado Cash. The attacker then swapped the BNB tokens for 5 million USDC. As the hacker has nearly completely drained the aBNBc liquidity pools on PancakeSwap and ApeSwap, the token has lost nearly 99% of its value, according to CoinGecko data. Ankr tweeted that all staked assets within the protocol are currently safe. On-chain analyst firm Lookonchain reported that one opportunistic trader was able to cash in on the exploit and turn 10 BNB ($2,885) into 15.5 million BUSD. The trader did this by taking advantage of DeFi lending protocol Helio, which did not have up-to-date pricing on aBNBc post-crash. The trader was also able to use the pre-crash pricing for aBNBc to borrow $16 million of the little-traded HAY stablecoin and convert that into BUSD. Since then, the HAY stablecoin has been tossed off its peg, hitting a low of 20 cents, and is now recovering, according to CoinMarketCap, with a price of 77 cents. By Sam Reynolds, Dec 2, 2022, https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/12/02/defi-protocol-ankr-exploited-for-over-5m/

vya4slav's Recent Blog Posts

Staked ether withdrawals are imminent This will be the most pressing issue that Ethereum developers will tackle. After September’s Merge, when Ethereum switched its consensus mechanism to proof-of-…
1 year ago
Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis said 2022 was “the biggest year ever” in terms of the number of crypto projects hit with attacks and drained of funds—and that was in October. It certainly felt…
1 year ago
Disgraced crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried today was released from custody by a New York judge under a $250 million bond agreement. That led to one big question across Crypto Twitter: Where did the…
1 year ago
Law enforcement authorities in Italy and Albania busted a suspected cryptocurrency investment scam estimated to have netted 15 million euros ($16 million). Assets worth 3 million euros were seized…
1 year ago
Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday approved a crypto regulation bill recently passed by that country’s Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The new law establishes a crime of fraud involving…
1 year ago