Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, had $570 million worth of tokens stolen after hackers discovered an exploit on the Binance Smart Chain. The company temporarily suspended all trading on the exchange in reaction to the theft, but has since resumed trading.

According to a CNBC report (opens in new tab), hackers made off with 2 million Binance coins (BNB), valued at about $570 million Binance initially reported (opens in new tab) that only $100 million worth of tokens had been stolen, but an internal investigation, later confirmed in a blog (opens in new tab) that more than that amount was taken. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao explained on Twitter (opens in new tab) that "an exploit on the BSC Token Hub, a cross-chain bridge, resulted in extra BNB." Bridges serve as intermediaries that allow the transfer of assets from one blockchain to another. Hackers used this exploit to forge transactions, essentially tricking the bridge into moving tokens from the network to a digital wallet.

Binance worked with several network validators (people or groups that validate transactions on the blockchain) to stop the creation of new blocks and suspended all transactions while the company investigated the security breach.

Zhao stated that the issue is "contained now" and that "the funds are safe."

Binance told CNBC that most of the stolen tokens are still in hackers' wallets and $100 million is "unclaimed." Binance said it plans to hold an "on-chain governance vote" among validators in the next few days to address post-attack issues such as freezing hacked funds or launching a bounty program to catch bugs and hackers. Binance plans to share more information on how it plans to protect its blockchain from cross-chain bridge attacks. The last time we saw a crypto heist this brazen was in 2021, when someone stole over $600 million (opens in new tab) in cryptocurrency from Poly Network and, oddly enough, returned half of it.