Ankr, a BNB Chain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, tweeted on December 1st that its aBNB coin had been exploited and that trades on platforms had been immediately suspended.
Additionally, Ankr said that all underlying assets on Ankr Staking were secure at the moment and that no infrastructure services had been impacted.
There has been a significant exploit, though there are currently few details available. According to a tweet yesterday from on-chain analysis firm Lookonchain, the exploiter generated 20T aBNBc and dumped it on PancakeSwap. There has transferred more than $5 million USDC.
In light of the exploit, Binance Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao also announced the suspension of withdrawals on the exchange on December 2nd; he said:
“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.”
The cryptocurrency exchange Binance stated in a tweet on December 2nd that its staff is working with necessary parties to look into the situation more thoroughly and that its users’ money is not in danger. Additionally, the exploiter’s wallet address has been “blacklisted,” according to the BNB Chain announcement.
Lookonchain’s Information About Ankr Exploit
The on-chain analysis company, however, recently published a Twitter thread detailing what Expoliter actually did and how much funds he took from it.
According to the firm, the exploiter first took the key from Ankr Deployer and then created 10T aBNBc for himself to transmit. He next used Ankr Deployer’s key to transmit 1.125 $BNB as a gas charge to the Exploiter address before starting to dump aBNBc.
In all, he swapped 4,050,500 USDC and 5,000 BNB for $1.5 million. He also converted 4,500 BNB into 1,293,087 USDC and transferred 900 BNB into Tornado Cash.
Then he used CelerNetwork and MultichainOrg to cross-chain the whole USDC to the Ethereum network. The entire 4,684,156 $USDC was exchanged for 3,446 $ETH. PancakeSwap’s pool of aBNBc-related transactions has been depleted, and “Ankr Exploiter has stopped dumping aBNBc.”
The firm claims that there was a significant decline in the price of ANKR. Upon receiving this signal, the smart money in their group promptly shorted ANKR and profited, earning a 53.25% return.
According to the firm’s statement:
A SmartMoney made 15.5M $BUSD with 10 $BNB! After Ankr Exploiter dumped aBNBc, he bought 183,885 aBNBc with just 10 $BNB($2,879). Then deposited 183,885 aBNBc into Helio_Money as collateral and borrowed 16M $HAY. In the end, sold 16M $HAY and get 15.5M $BUSD.
The firm further highlighted that this SmartMoney has already borrowed $HAY and purchased inexpensive aBNBc as security. However, since aBNBc was dumped, the price has not decreased to $0. He only earned 107.65 $BNB in total, which is not a lot of money.
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