The Bancor Exchange platform fell victim to a hacker attack on July 9. A total of 23.5 million US dollars were stolen by the thieves in various crypto currencies. Some of the stolen tokens have already been frozen.
On the morning of July 9, Bancor published its first statement.
After they closed their Bitcoin loophole website for maintenance, it was first posted on Twitter:
„This morning, Bancor had a security breach. User Bitcoin loophole wallets were not affected. To investigate this, we switched to maintenance operations and will shortly be making a more detailed statement. We are confident to be back online as soon as possible.“
In a later statement the realization followed. The hacker or hackers captured 24,984 ETH (approx. 12.5 million US dollars), nearly 229 million NPXS (approx. 1 million US dollars) and 3.2 million BNT (approx. 10 million US dollars) with a total Bitcoin loophole value of approx. 23.5 million US dollars. The Exchange platform explained that a wallet for updating Smart Contracts was influenced to then withdraw the sums mentioned. However, user wallets are still not affected.
In the same statement, Bancor wrote that they had succeeded in freezing their own BNT tokens so that the thief could no longer take advantage of them.
Bancor also announces regarding the news spy:
„It is not possible to freeze the news spy or the other stolen tokens. However, we are now working with onlinebetrug on another crypto scam to find the stolen tokens and make it more difficult for the thief to liquidate them.“
Hard Criticism
Bancor collected $153 million from its ICO last year, making it one of the most famous decentralized exchanges (DEX).
Since the incident, there have been several voices criticizing more than just the vulnerability. Bancor is the focus of criticism and must ask itself whether decentralized platforms should have integrated emergency options in the event of a hacker attack.
In this context, links were also drawn to the DAO disaster two years ago. Even then, the question was raised as to whether intervention was in the sense of decentralization.
Charlie Lee spoke on Twitter of a „false sense of decentralization“ of the platform.
After the incident, the BNT price fell by 14 percent, but has since stabilised again. The extent to which Bancor can now recover the remainder of the stolen amount remains to be seen. Discussions about intervention in decentralized systems are continuing.