DeFi Hack Targeting BSC Got $12.7M in Bitcoin Stolen From pNetwork

Almost $13 million worth of tokenized Bitcoin has been stolen from the DeFi hack on Binance Smart Chain-based cross-chain platform called pNetwork.

Decentralized Finance DeFi platform pNetwork has become the most recent protocol to hackers on Binance Smart Chain, reporting a loss of almost $13 million worth of Bitcoin.

According to a Twitter thread published by pNetwork on Sept. 20, the incursion resulted in 277 pBTC being siphoned from the exchange. The hackers made off with the bulk of the network’s collateral, pNetwork added.

The team noted the attack was executed by exploiting a bug in its codebase, adding that a fix is already current. pNetwork also offered for the hacker to stay 11.5% of the stolen funds if they return the funds.

“To the black hat hacker. Although this is a long shot, we’re offering a clean $1,500,000 bounty if funds are returned.”

At the time of writing, the team has not issued any longer details on the exploit. pNetwork team is yet to debate whether it plans to reimburse impacted users.

pNetwork facilitates the movement of digital assets across different blockchains. Like other wrapped token protocols, users can mint pBTC by depositing BTC into a wise contract — allowing them to migrate the worth of their BTC off the Bitcoin network and onto EVM compatible chains.

The price of pNetwork’s governance token PNT token has plunged 18% within the past 24 hours.

pNetwork isn’t the primary cross-chain platform to be exploited as DeFi exchange THORChain suffered a $7.6 million hack in July. Just a pair of weeks later, THORchain was hacked again for around $8 million. Fortunately for the platform, the hacker clothed to be a “white hat”, promising to return the funds for a tenth bounty.

Binance Smart Chain has had quite its justifiable share of exploits to this point this year. The ever-lengthening list of BSC exploits includes PancakeBunny, Cream Finance, bEarn, Bogged Finance, Uranium Finance, Meerkat Finance, SafeMoon, Spartan Protocol, BurgerSwap, Belt Finance, and now pNetwork.

Binance Smart Chain DeFi was also involved within the record-breaking Poly Network hack in early August which saw $253 million lifted from BSC and quite $600 million stolen in total though the benevolent hacker returned nearly all of the funds.