DeFi Platform Ankr Exploited: Here’s What You Should Know

On December 1st, the BNB Chain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) system Ankr stated it had been the victim of a multi-million dollar exploit.

On-chain security analyst PeckShield appeared to have made the initial discovery of the attack at around 12:35 a.m. UTC on December 2.

Ankr, a cryptocurrency exchange, announced on Twitter an hour after the hack that the aBNB coin had been compromised and that it was working with exchanges to quickly cease trade of the token.

Attacker allegedly created 20 trillion Ankr Reward Bearing Staked BNB, aBNBc, a token that may be staked for rewards in BNB.

An exploiter who stole almost $5 million USD Coin USDC has reportedly used services like Uniswap, Tornado Cash, and numerous bridges to swap and disguise the funds. This information comes from a tweet by on-chain monitoring business Lookonchain.

There was a follow-up article reassuring users that  “all underlying assets on Ankr Staking are safe at this time, and all infrastructure services are unaffected.”

Beosin, a blockchain security firm, speculated that a recent technological upgrade by the Ankr team, roughly 12 hours prior, could have left the smart contract code vulnerable to attack, in addition to compromised private keys.

Beosin also mentioned that the mass minting episode led to a 99.5% drop in the price of aBNBc, from $303.89 to $1.53 within a couple of hours, as recorded by data from CoinMarketCap.

Binance Steps In To Control Ankr Exploit

Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, said on December 2 that its team is in contact with the proper authorities and that user funds on Ankr are safe. BNB Chain’s Twitter has confirmed that the exploiter’s wallet address has been banned.

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 Binance (@cz_binance) December 2, 2022

One of the largest blockchain networks, BNB Chain, was also hacked in October, later detailed by Paradigm researchers. Cyber attackers have been particularly active this past October. Over  $3 billion has been pocketed by hackers in 2022.

According to Chainalysis, if this trend continues, 2022 will surpass 2021 as the most active year for hacking.

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