The Layer 1 blockchain QANplatform, which appears to be resistant to attacks aided by quantum computing power, was today the target of a bridge hack that resulted in the theft of 1.4 billion QANX tokens (just over a million dollars).
Blockchain security company Peckshield was the first to flag the attack in a QANplattform-tagged tweet early Tuesday morning. The first heist looted over 1.4 billion QANX tokens, according to Etherscanand was followed by further smaller transactions to the same address, this time sending 28.6 million QANX, or about $20,500.
Shortly after Peckshield reached out, QANplatform tweeted its own announcement, asking people not to conduct any transactions with $QANX. ONE follow-up tweet said that all trading, withdrawals and deposits on centralized exchanges had been paused.
Decrypt contacted a representative from Peckshield who explained the attacker’s methods: “The exploiter withdrew ~1.4B QANX from the deployment address and exchanged it for ~3090 $BNB ($837.5k) and ~256 $ETH ($328k). Let’s say it’s about $1.2 million total.”
Peckshield also confirmed that it was not investigating the theft with QANplatform.
QANplatform joins the list of bridgehacks
Blockchain bridges, which connect different blockchain ecosystems, have become a common target among cryptohackers. Earlier this year, Axie Infinity developer Sky Mavis was the target of one of the biggest hacks of all time.
On March 23, attackers siphoned 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5 million USDC stablecoins from the bridge connecting Sky Mavis’ custom Ronin sidechain to Ethereum. The historical 622 million dollars However, the theft was not discovered until March 29.
In the aftermath of the attack, popular exchange Binance led a $150 million funding round to replace the victims. Contributors included Animoca, the company behind the popular crypto game The sandboxand technology venture capital firm a16z.
Another Binance-affiliated entity was last week the target of another colossal bridge hack.
On Friday, attackers could steal 100 million dollars in cryptocurrencies from the “cross-chain bridge between BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) and BNB Smart Chain (BEP20 or BSC),” according to a official mail.
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