Who Is Behind the Ankr Hack?

Blockchain infrastructure provider Ankr is collaborating with law enforcement to pursue the attacker responsible for the hack earlier this month.

A former employee of the DeFi protocol Ankr maliciously orchestrated the attack on December 2, resulting in approximately $5 million in damages, according to a statement released on Ankr’s website.

The attacker inserted a malicious code package that allowed them to mint 6 trillion aBNBc tokens. These tokens were then exchanged for BNB, which was subsequently sent through the Tornado Cash mixer and swapped for 5 million USDC.

“We are in the process of working with law enforcement to prosecute a former employee and bring them to justice,” Ankr stated.

See Also: Ankr Coin

In response to the unfortunate security breach, Ankr has conducted a balance snapshot and compensated victims of the hack—those who held aBNBc or aBNBb before the attack. Additionally, Ankr has airdropped BNB to affected liquidity providers. The project has personally covered $5 million worth of BNB to counteract the tokens the hacker released into the market.

In December, Lodestar Finance—a lending platform on Arbitrum—also suffered a security incident with $6.5 million in losses due to a flash loan manipulation attack.