DeFi (Decentralised finance) platform Ankr has been exploited for $5 million.
Hackers used a minting bug to extract value from Ankr and its aBNBc token.
Ankr informed users of the hack and plans to reimburse anyone who was impacted by the exploit.
Ankr suffers from DeFi hack
Ankr’s aBNBc (Ankr Reward Bearing Stake BNB) token has been exploited for $5 million. The token has fallen over 99%. Ankr’s native ANKR token on the other hand has only fallen by 2%.
The Ankr team asked users to withdraw liquidity from decentralised exchanges (DEXs) and pressured centralised exchanges to pause Ankr trading.
The exploit was possible by calling a minting bug in Ankr’s smart contract that allowed the hacker to mint six quadrillion tokens and dumped them for Binance's BNB coin using Pancakeswap, crashing aBNBc’s price.
After swapping aBNBc for BNB tokens the hacker used Tornado Cash to try and hide the funds.
Ankr is committed to reimbursing users who were affected by the hack. Binance CEO CZ tweeted about the hack and how Binance managed to freeze $3 million worth of stolen funds from the hacker.
Crypto hackers run rampant
Recently, Solana’s Mango Markets DeFi platform was hacked for $100 million. The hacker managed to escape with a $47 million bug bounty after agreeing to cooperate with Mango Markets.
In October, Binance was hacked for $566 million. Unfortunately, the hacker was able to escape with some of the funds. Binance has been on the hunt for the hacker since the exploit and has vowed to get justice.
The crypto market is no stranger to hacks and exploits, especially DeFi protocols. It's essential for DeFi providers and exchanges to improve their ability to detect and deter hackers, and it is up to crypto traders to be aware of the risks and how to avoid them when trading online.
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