- Ankr has recently confirmed an exploit in their DeFi protocol.
- The attacker printed six quadrillion aBNBc tokens.
- All staked assets inside the protocol are now safe.
The DeFi protocol, Ankr, confirmed a multi-million dollar attack that occurred on December 1st. Ankr protocol dubbs itself the first “node-as-a-service” platform. Allegedly, the exploit was a result of a fault in its code that permitted limitless token minting.
The Ankr contract’s code, according to security research company PeckShield, reportedly permits any user to create an infinite number of the protocol’s reward-bearing staking tokens without any kind of verification. This made it possible for the attacker to print six quadrillion aBNBc tokens.
The attacker was able to exchange 20 trillion of the aBNBc token for BNB. This was after creating the quadrillions of aBNBc tokens, and then moving them to Tornado Cash. The attacker subsequently exchanged the BNB tokens for USDC worth 5 million.
According to statistics from CoinGecko, the aBNBc coin has lost approximately 99% of its value as a result of the hack. The incident almost totally drained the liquidity pools on PancakeSwap and ApeSwap.
All staked assets inside the protocol are now safe, according to a tweet from Ankr.
One savvy trader was able to capitalize on the exploit and transform 10 BNB ($2,885) into 15.5 million BUSD, according to on-chain analyst company Lookonchain. The trader accomplished this by using DeFi lending protocol Helio, which lacked the most recent price on aBNBc post-crash.
The trader was also able to borrow $16 million of the seldom traded HAY stablecoin and convert it into BUSD by using the pre-crash aBNBc price. Since then, the HAY stablecoin has fallen out of favor, reaching a low of 20 cents. However, it is currently rebounding, with a price of 77 cents, according to CoinMarketCap.
