Human beings, as we know, tend to excel in various different things, and yet their greatest ability is the one that allows them to get better on a consistent basis. This ability, in particular, has allowed us to hit upon some huge milestones, with technology really proving to be the crowning jewel of the stated group. The reason why technology enjoys such an esteemed stature in our eyes is largely down to its unprecedented skill-set, which ushered us towards a reality that we couldn’t have imagined otherwise. Nevertheless, if you take a closer look, it becomes pretty clear how the whole runner was also inspired by the way we utilized those skills in a real-world setting. The latter component was, in fact, what gave the creation a spectrum-wide presence, and consequentially, kickstarted a tech revolution. Now, this revolution, in turn, will go on to scale up our lives from every conceivable direction, but having said that, we can’t ignore the sheer number of shortcomings that continue to plague technology’s prospects under one capacity or the other. One such shortcoming talks to the raging problem of cybersecurity. Alongside widening our horizons beyond all limits, technology has, notably enough, made us more vulnerable than ever before. If anything, the stated development’s impact on the world has only gotten worse with time, and one recent attack involving Binance does a lot to prove the same.
Cryptocurrency exchange, Binance has temporarily suspended its blockchain network after suffering a cyberattack that put the company back by a whopping $570 million. According to certain reports, the breach was centered upon a cross-chain bridge, which was linked with the company’s now renowned BNB Chain. Hence, when the hackers succeeded in instilling a bug into the stated bridge’s smart contract, it basically allowed them to forge transactions and transfer funds to a different blockchain altogether.
When quizzed regarding this sensational breach, Adrian Hetman, tech lead of the triaging team at Immunefi, said.
“As with many bridge designs, there is one central point that holds most of the funds that are moving through the bridge. Ultimately, the Bridge was tricked into giving funds from that contract.”
Binance, on its part, did issue a timely response by coordinating with various BNB Chain validators to enact an upgrade. This ensured that a bigger chunk of the funds were frozen on the BNB chain itself. However, a sum of $100 million has been deemed unrecoverable. As shocking as the whole case sounds, it’s really one of the many we have seen this year. To give you some statistics, according to Chainalysis, an estimated sum of around $1.4 billion has been lost to breaches on cross-chain bridges since the start of 2022. This downwards trend is even apparent around the wider cryptocurrency industry, which has seen almost $2 trillion of its value getting erased over the last year or so. Hence, amidst an already deflating economic environment, such a massive cyberattack does very little to brighten up the landscape.