Latest crypto hack sees $12.7m 'wrapped' bitcoin stolen from pNetwork

Admin September 20, 2021.

A hacker has stolen $12.7m (£9.3m) in bitcoin from crypto transfer platform pNetwork. 

pNetwork said in a tweet late on Sunday: "We're sorry to inform the community that an attacker was able to leverage a bug in our codebase and attack pBTC on BSC, stealing 277 BTC (most of its collateral)."It said that all other "bridges" were not affected, adding: "All other funds in the pNetwork are safe."

Apologising for what had happened, it said the bridges would be reactivated in a matter of hours. 

pBTC is pNetwork's version of wrapped bitcoin. Wrapped bitcoin is a token on a smart contract blockchain that can be used as a 1:1 to an equivalent amount of bitcoin. It means bitcoin can be used in decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols. 

The hack took place on Binance Smart Chain, which was also involved in the $610m Poly Network hack earlier this year — the biggest DeFi heist in history. 

pNetwork said it had identified a fix and that it was "prioritising security over speed." There hasn't been an update on the company's twitter since 11.43pm on Sunday night. 

It offered a $1.5m bounty to the attacker on return of the stolen funds, adding "this is a long shot."

"Finding vulnerabilities is part of the game unfortunately, but we all want DeFi ecosystem to continue growing, returning funds is a step in that direction," it said.

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An admin on pNetwork's Telegram channel said: "The team is working on the post-mortem as we speak and more information about the incident will be available shortly."

The price of pNetwork’s governance token PNT token has lost 18% of its value in the past 24 hours.