Cross-chain protocol pNetwork has suffered a hack depriving it of 277 Bitcoin, roughly equivalent to $12.67 million. The network revealed that the hacker had installed a bug on its Binance Blockchain codebase. All other funds are safe as no other blockchains were affected. The attacker targeted the pBTC token on Binance Smart Chain. pNetwork has identified the bug and proposed a solution. In addition, they are offering the hacker $1.5 million to return the stolen funds.
pNetwork tweeted:
“We’re sorry to inform the community that an attacker was able to leverage a bug in our codebase and attack pBTC on BSC, stealing 277 BTC (most of it collateral). The other bridges were not affected. All other funds in the pNetwork are safe.”
According to a second tweet, the protocol is currently rehabilitating the bug and working on reactivating the bridges once they are safe. This shouldn’t take more than a few hours. The network assured users that they were doing everything they could to find a solution for those holding pBTC on BSC and would keep them updated. pNetwork is not optimistic about the hacker accepting the reward, describing it as a “long shot”.
In a follow-up tweet to the hacker, they pleaded:
“To the black hat hacker. Although this is a long shot, we’re offering a clean $1,500,000 bounty if funds are returned. Finding vulnerabilities is part of the game, unfortunately, but we all want the DeFi ecosystem to continue growing and returning the funds is a step in that direction.”
DeFi hacks: Part of a bigger trend?
The hack trend is quite pronounced. The most recent major attack was on DEX protocol NowSwap, which lost more than $1 million last week. The hackers made off with 535,000 USDT and 158 WETH. 1inch, a distributed network service, converts USDT to ETH. Then, the funds are transferred to Tornado Cash, an anonymous Ethernet Square trading platform. Similarly, CREAM Finance lost 2,804.96 ETH tokens and 462,079,976 AMP tokens.
The biggest DeFi hack in history
The biggest DeFi hack in history remains that of PolyNetwork, which lost $610 million. Thankfully, it was a white hack attack and the platform has recovered all of its funds, although not without some effort. In related news, a hacker stole 2 million USDT, 390,000 BUSD, and 1 BTCB from Neko Network. These are just some protocols that have suffered DeFi hacks and their consequences.
