BNB Chain-based protocol Ankr (ANKR) confirmed it was hacked earlier this morning. The situation in question also attracted the attention of the Binance platform, which is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange with its trading volume. Here are the details…
Binance CEO made a statement for ANKR
As Kriptokoin.com reported in the morning, ANKR was attacked by a hack. While it is stated that there is a loss of 5 million dollars in the current situation, a statement came from Binance on the subject. The exchange said users’ funds on the exchange are safe. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also made a statement. Zhao stated that, based on his team’s reviews, they found that developer private keys had been hacked. Also, it turns out that the hacker/hackers updated the smart contract in their favor.
On top of that, Zhao stated that they stopped withdrawals in the trading pairs affected by the event. He also said that “we also froze 3 million dollars that hackers transferred to our exchange.” He stressed that there is no shortage of original smart contracts of ANKR token and HAY.
Possible hacks on Ankr and Hay. Initial analysis is developer private key was hacked, and the hacker updated the smart contract to a more malicious one. Binance paused withdrawals a few hrs ago. Also froze about $3m that hackers move to our CEX.
— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) December 2, 2022
aBNBc, HAY and ANKR: Prices fell
In the hack, his private key was hacked, allowing the attacker to manipulate an Ankr smart contract. Thanks to this, the attacker managed to mint 6 quadrillion aBNBc tokens, which he converted to about 5 million USDC. The price of the aBNBc token has dropped almost 100 percent since the exploit. Recent reports suggest that the attacker transferred some of the stolen funds to Tornado Cash. ANKR price has lost close to 5 percent at this time.
Recently, BNB Chain launched its liquid staking feature through Ankr, which allows users to earn interest and receive aBNBc by assigning BNB tokens to the liquid staking contract. The price of aBNBc dropped 99.5 percent after the exploit, as the hacker almost completely drained the aBNBc liquidity pools on PancakeSwap and ApeSwap.
After Ankr hacker sold aBNBc, a trader bought 183,885 aBNBc with only 10 BNB worth $2,879. He then deposited 183,885 aBNBc in Helio as collateral and borrowed 16 million HAY. He eventually sold 16 million HAYs and received 15.5 million BUSD. As a result, the HAY stablecoin also saw a big drop. The stablecoin’s price dropped to $0.21 at one point. However, it still managed to gradually climb to $0.61 at the time of writing.
Ankr team statement: Don’t buy and sell tokens
After the Ankr team immediately notified the crypto community that aBNBc tokens had been hacked, they began working with exchanges to immediately suspend trading. In addition, the team confirmed that all key assets on Ankr Staking are secure and infrastructure services are not affected. In the latest set of instructions shared by the Ankr team, users are advised not to buy or sell the affected tokens. It asked liquidity providers to remove liquidity from decentralized exchanges and hold aBNBc tokens. Ankr plans to reissue Ankr Reward Bearing Staked BNB (aBNBc) tokens after assessing the situation.
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