Approximately $80,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) was lost due to a potential exploit of the BNB chain involving multiple suspicious transactions.
Although $80,000 is a small amount compared to a typical cryptocurrency exploit, it raises questions about the attacker’s intentions.
It is not yet known which token contract was exploited, but according to on-chain security company Cyvers, the attackers could be white hackers or ethical hackers who use their skills to find security vulnerabilities. In a May 28 X post, the company wrote:
“The total loss is approximately $80 million. The attackers appear to have received funds through TornadoCash and also interacted with the Binance exchange, indicating possible white hat actions.”
Cointelegraph approached Cybers for comment.
Despite receiving funds from cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash, the attackers also interacted with Binance, the world’s largest centralized exchange.
Sophisticated cryptocurrency hackers with malicious intent avoid interacting with large, centralized exchanges like Binance, which require know-your-customer (KYC) checks and could reveal the identity of malicious actors.
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Some hacks have happy endings
The potential exploit comes a week after Gala Games was exploited for $23 million worth of Gala (GALA) tokens. According to Gala Games co-founder and CEO Eric Schiermeyer, the exploit was caused by an “internal controls” issue, which the team fixed.
In an unexpected turn of events, the hacker returned $22.3 million worth of Ether (ETH), close to the market value of the 600 million GALA he had stolen and sold a day earlier, after the attacker’s wallet was frozen with the stolen funds.
The funds were returned after Gala co-founder and CEO Eric Schiermeyer said the alleged attacker was identified in a May 20 Discord post with X and “his home address.”
This is the second time in May that a thief changed his mind and returned stolen funds.
Earlier this month, $71 million worth of cryptocurrency stolen in a recent wallet poisoning scam was returned to victims.
An unknown attacker returned $71 million on May 12 after a high-profile phishing incident caught the attention of several blockchain research firms.
However, on-chain transactions show that the attacker was not an ethical hacker, but rather a malicious actor who decided to return the funds out of fear of mainstream attention.
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