Nearly $80,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) was lost in a potential BNB chain exploit involving several suspicious transactions.
Although $80,000 is a small amount compared to the average cryptocurrency exploit, it raises questions about the attacker’s intentions.
Although the exploited token contract remains unknown, the attacker could be a white hat hacker or an ethical hacker, using their skills to find security vulnerabilities, according to blockchain security firm Cyvers. The company wrote in a post dated May 28
“The total loss is approximately $80,000. The attacker received funding through TornadoCash and also interacted with the Binance exchange, indicating possible white hat action.
Cointelegraph has contacted Cyvers for comment.
Although he received funding from cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash, the scalper also interacted with Binance, the world’s largest centralized exchange.
Sophisticated and malicious hackers avoid interacting with large centralized exchanges like Binance, which require know-your-customer (KYC) verification and can lead to the discovery of the identities of malicious actors.
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Some hacks have a happy ending
The potential exploit comes a week after Gala Games was mined for $23 million in Gala (GALA) tokens. According to Eric Schiermeyer, co-founder and CEO of Gala Games, the exploit occurred due to an “internal controls” issue, which the team has since resolved.
In an unexpected turn of events, the hacker returned $22.3 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) – roughly the market value of the $600 million GALA they had stolen and sold the day before – after having frozen the attacker’s wallet with the stolen funds.
The refund came after Gala co-founder and CEO Eric Schirmeyer said in a May 20 post on X and Discord that the alleged attacker had been identified, including his “home address.”
This is the second time in May that the thief has changed his mind and returned the stolen money.
Earlier this month, $71 million in cryptocurrencies stolen in a recent wallet poisoning scam were returned to the victim.
The anonymous attacker returned $71 million on May 12 after a high-profile phishing incident attracted the attention of several blockchain investigation firms.
However, cross-chain transactions indicate that the attacker was not an ethical hacker but a malicious actor who was afraid of public attention and decided to return the funds.
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