DeFi project Flare on BNB Chain hacked for $17.9 million

An unknown actor siphoned assets worth $17.9 million from the Flare DeFi protocol on BNB Chain. The protocol token collapsed to zero, PeckShield researchers noted.

It seems $FLARE is dumped/exploitedhttps://t.co/gXoVu1r2wG pic.twitter.com/ixUtknwW92

— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) November 13, 2022

Experts stressed that this is not a Flare Networks infrastructure project.

The attacker’s haul consisted of roughly 17 million BUSD and 4,000 BNB. Some of the assets were sent to the Tornado Cash mixing service.

The stolen funds/loss is about ~$17M and 4,000 BNB of them are being washed via @TornadoCash https://t.co/u6HpyRsC8y pic.twitter.com/3Q4sv9i8ub

— PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) November 13, 2022

PeckShield noted the possibility that the developers carried out a rug pull, as 3.9 billion FLARE tokens were withdrawn from the protocol via the withdrawProfit function of an unverified smart contract.

The hacker also engaged in dialogue with the team via transactions.

“Could you send me some information about your project? If this isn’t a scam, perhaps we could talk,” the message says.

In response, the developers assured that their priority is ‘to save the losses of ecosystem users’, and proposed email as the next channel of communication.

“Of course, we hope we can resolve the issue amicably,” they said.

October was a record month for losses from exploits since the start of the year—about $760.2 million. Just over $100 million of that amount has been recovered by the protocols.

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