Allbridge Exploiter Returns Around $465k of Stolen Funds

The multichain token bridge Allbridge, which was recently hacked, said that 1,500 BNB (worth around $465,000) was returned to its team. The rest of the funds will be considered a white hat bounty to the exploiter, according to the statement.

The cross-chain bridge enables digital asset transfer from one blockchain network to another via liquidity pools. Over the weekend, a malicious entity drained funds after manipulating the prices in Allbridge’s liquidity pools on BNB Chain using a flash loan.

Hack Aftermath

Allbridge was forced to suspend its bridge protocol soon after the exploit and offered an undisclosed bounty to the attacker as a chance to escape any legal consequences. The stolen funds were estimated to be more than $550,000 by security firms CertiK and PeckShield, even as the project is yet to confirm the figure.

As per the latest update, Allbridge said the funds received in BNB were converted to BUSD, which will be used as compensation.

The team behind the project also notified the existence of a different address involved in the hack that used the same exploit technique but did not contact them. Allbridge urged the second attacker to reach out and discuss returning the stolen funds.

Earlier, the project announced plans to compensate the victims by setting up a “recovery fund” while adding that the operations will be resumed once the issue is resolved. A separate web interface was also rolled out to help liquidity providers withdraw their assets from Allbridge’s liquidity pools.

Crypto Drained in Exploits: March Edition

The recovering prices in digital assets in March attracted many exploiters as hacking attacks gained significant traction. According to a recent report by PeckShield, cyber criminals drained more than $211 million worth of crypto in March, an increase of around 500% compared to the $35.3 million lost in February this year. The month recorded 26 different hacks.

The Euler Finance exploit was the largest contributor, accounting for 93% of the total stash, followed by the decentralized finance (DeFi) project SafeMoon with $8.7 million and ParaSpace with $5.2 million in losses.