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Hackers have stolen around $570 million in tokens from Binance, in a rare blow to the world’s biggest crypto exchange and another dent to the troubled digital assets industry struggling to regain trust after a collapse in prices.
Binance initially estimated on Friday that tokens worth about $100 million to $110 million had been taken, pausing the operation of the affected blockchain for approximately eight hours.
However, the exchange later disclosed that the hacker had taken around 2 million of the cryptocurrency BNB, Binance’s own digital token, with a value of around $284 each. The hack targeted BSC Token Hub, a bridge between two Binance systems.
It comes at a time when digital assets are trying to recover from a credit crisis that wiped nearly two-thirds off the value of its most high-profile tokens such as bitcoin. Industry data have also indicated that theft from projects is soaring this year.
Cyber criminals had taken nearly $2 billion this year to the end of July, nearly double the total in the first seven months of last year, according to data from Chainalysis. High-profile thefts included $600 million from the blockchain behind popular crypto-gaming platform Axie Infinity. Many hacks have been traced to state-sponsored actors in North Korea.
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