Binance pauses withdrawals after Ankr hack

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the crypto exchange has paused withdrawals after Web 3 operator Ankr and Hay were hacked.

"Initial analysis is developer private key was hacked, and the hacker updated the smart contract to a more malicious one.", he tweeted.

Zhao said that Binance has paused withdrawals several hours ago and froze several millions of dollars that hackers tried to move.

Ankr is a decentralized Web3 infrastructure provider meant to helps developers and users to interact with blockchain. The company boasts to provide the fastest Web3 infrastructure.

The company acknowledged it's system was breached in the wee hours of December 2, tweeting that Ankr's aBNB token has been exploited.

The hackers minted trillions of aBNBc tokens and went on to swap the newly created crypto to USDC, a digital stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, and other

The move could be compared to a bank robber printing trillions of euros and swapping them for US dollars, before authorities noticed the heist and inflation, caused by the influx of newly created cash, has kicked in.

According to researchers from Nansen, a blockchain analytics platform, threat actors managed to swap over $5 millions worth of crypto.