Ankr Protocol Suffers Massive “Unlimited Minting” Exploit

While everyone’s attention is on Sam Bankman-Fried’s interviews, DeFi hackers have not been resting on their oars, with Ankr Protocol reporting an exploit on their platform.

There has been a significant Ankr Protocol exploit, albeit there aren’t many specifics available at the present. The development team disclosed that its aBNB coin had been exploited on December 2. Additionally, it stated that it was coordinating with exchanges to halt trading.

🚨BREAKING: @ankr Protocol exploit. $aBNBc pool drained and hacker may have printed billions of BNB.

— BSC News (@BSCNews) December 2, 2022

All underlying assets on Ankr Staking are currently safe, according to Ankr, and all infrastructure services are unaffected.

Ankr is a supplier of Web3 infrastructure for the BNB Chain ecosystem. It is a platform for cloud computing that shares surplus processing resources. You can mine its native ANKR cryptocurrency by lending the network your processing power. On BEP-20 tokens, Ankr also provides a selection of staking and yield-earning opportunities.

The limitless mint flaw was found in the aBNBc token’s smart contract, according to blockchain security company PeckShield.

Additionally, it stated that 900 BNB worth roughly $253,000 had been moved into Tornado Cash by the Ankr exploiter. The exploiter reportedly controls 500,000 USDC and 3,000 ETH (about $3.8 million) as well as having bridged USDC and ETH to Ethereum.

Ankr Protocol Exploiter Now 13th-Largest aBNBc Holder

The hacker has amassed 20 trillion aBNBc and is now the token’s 13th-largest holder. Ankr Reward Bearing Staked BNB is another name for the staking reward token known as aBNBc.

PeckShield also noted that the vulnerability was being copied by others, leading to copycat exploits.

Although the damages haven’t been completely realized, they are probably in the millions of dollars. According to early estimations, hackers obtained $5 million by washing tokens over different bridges and DEXes.

Additionally, reports show that in October, BNB Chain was at the top of the list of cryptocurrency scams and rug pulls.