BNB Chain Faces $80K Bitcoin Exploit White hat hacker or persistent exploit?

Nearly $80,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) was lost in an exploit involving several suspicious transactions on the BNB Chain.

While $80,000 is considered a small amount compared to the average crypto exploit, it raises questions about the attacker's motives.

Although the terms of the agreement exploited are not yet known, the attacker may be a white hat hacker or an ethical hacker, who uses his skills to look for security vulnerabilities, according to cyber security firm Syvers. In a May 28 X post, the organization wrote:

The total loss is approximately $80,000. The attacker received funding through TornadoCash and was also linked to the Binance exchange, indicating that it could be a white hat operation.

Cointelegraph has reached out to Syvers for comment.

The exploiter is also linked to Binance, the world's largest centralized exchange, despite receiving funding from a cryptocurrency mixing service called Tornado Cash.

Sophisticated crypto hackers with malicious intent avoid interacting with large centralized exchanges like Binance, which require Know Your Customer (KYC) verification and can lead to the identification of malicious actors.

Related: Mt. Gox moves $9.6B worth of Bitcoin. Are creditors paid now?

Some hacks have happy endings.

The potential exploit comes a week after the Gala Games mined $23 million worth of Gala tokens. Eric Schiermeier, founder and CEO of Gala Games, said the exploit was caused by a problem with “internal controls” that the team has since fixed.

Unexpectedly, the hacker returned $22.3 million worth of Ether (ETH) – close to the market value of the 600 million gal he stole and sold the day before – after the attacker's wallet was frozen with the stolen money.

The refund comes after Gala founder and CEO Eric Schiermeier said in a May 20 X and Discord post that the attacker had been identified, including his “home address.”

This is the second time in May that a thief had a change of heart and returned stolen money.

Earlier this month, $71 million worth of cryptocurrency stolen in a recent wallet poisoning scam was returned to the victim.

An unknown attacker recovered $71 million after a high-profile phishing incident caught the attention of several blockchain investigative firms.

But transactions on the chain suggest the attacker was not an ethical hacker, but a rogue actor who feared the mainstream attention and decided to return the money.

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