$12M in Bitcoin Stolen in the Latest DeFi Hack Against the Cross-Chain Protocol pNetwork

The cross-chain DeFi protocol, pNetwork, has informed that it has become the latest victim of a security breach. By leveraging a codebase bug, the unknown perpetrator has stolen 277 bitcoins.

• As announced by the team behind the project, the hacker “was able to leverage a bug in our codebase and attack pBTC” on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Ultimately, he managed to take 277 bitcoins, most of which were collateral.
• Even with today’s prices when the cryptocurrency dumped by $4,000 in 24 hours, this substantial amount has a USD value of over $12 million.
• The project updated later that it had identified the bug, proposed a fix, and was waiting for “everyone to review it.”
• pNetwork reassured that all other bridges of its network were not affected and the remaining funds stored are safe. Additionally, the breached bridges should become operational once again soon.
• The team also had a message to the “black hat hacker,” offering a “clean” $1.5 million bounty if they return all funds.

4/N 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

— pNetwork 🦜 (@pNetworkDeFi) September 19, 2021

• While pNetwork admitted that the chances of such a scenario are slim, it wouldn’t be a precedent. As reported before, Poly Network was also exploited for more than $600 million in different digital assets. However, Mr. White Hat, as the project named the perpetrator, ultimately returned all funds and even rejected the offered bounty.
• It’s worth noting that the native cryptocurrency of pNetwork – PNT – has dumped by 20% on a 24-hour scale and currently sits below $1.