pNetwork DeFi Bridging Protocol Suffers $12 Million Hack: Report

The pNetwork Defi bridging protocol suffered a $12 million hack as an unknown hacker exploited a bug in the codebase, stealing 277 bitcoins from the Binance Smart Chain bridge as we can see more in our latest altcoin news today.

Th ehacker stole 277 wrapped bitcoin worth $12.5 million by exploiting a bug in the Defi interoperability protocol pNetwork and its developers announced it over the weekend. According to the Twitter account, the bug in the protocol’s codebase was used to attack pBTC tokens which Are a network’s version of the wrapped BTC which was stored on the Binance Smart Chain. Wrapped assets are one of the various DeFi applications that are available on the market while DeFi is a growing ecosystem within the crypto industry that offers plenty of the same traditional services as banks and brokers but with no centralized entities.

2/N We have identified the bug and are working on fixing it. The bridges will be re-activated as soon as it's safe to, most likely in a matter of hours.

Updates to follow.

— pNetwork 🦜 (@pNetworkDeFi) September 19, 2021

To create a wrapped asset, users have to lock it up on the native blockchain and mint the corresponding wrapped version which can be processed on other networks with the wrapped version then tracks the price of the original asset but it is compatible with another blockchain. According to the website, there is over $190 million worth of various cryptocurrencies that are locked in the protocol’s cross-chain bridges but most of them remain safe since only the pBTC tokens on BSC are affected by the hack today. Right after the hack was discovered, the protocol’s developers stated that they identified the bug and proposed a new fix so they are now waiting for everyone to review it.

In the meantime, they tried to appeal to the hacker’s better nature and offered a bounty of $1.5 million in exchange for the stolen funds but it is still not clear whether the attacker responded to the offer or not. pNetwork tweeted:

“To the black hat hacker. Although this is a long shot, we’re offering a clean $1,500,000 bounty if funds are returned. Finding vulnerabilities is part of the game unfortunately, but we all want DeFi ecosystem to continue growing, returning funds is a step in that direction.”

The developers reassured the users of the protocol that they are working on a new solution for the users that are affected by the attack and they will keep everyone posted.