Following the shell shocking hack of $615 Million on Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge, Binance has sought to take preventive measures by temporarily suspending all deposits & withdrawals on the Ronin Network.
Under the official announcement, Binance had also paused withdrawals of Wrapped Ether (WETH) on the Ethereum network along with the convert function from WETH to ETH. Furthermore, potential hacker addresses were blocked and a monitoring team was set up to track any unusual transactions. The exchange did not give any specific timeline for resumption, adding that the restrictions would remain in place until the network became stable.
Less than 24 hours ago, Ronin developers got wind of a security breach that was exploited by a hacker nearly a week ago. The perpetrator managed to steal 173,600 ETH ($600 Million) and 25.5 million USDC from the platform in one of the largest hacks recorded to date. In a newsletter, Ronin said that it was engaging with law officials and forensic cryptographers to recover the stolen funds. The Binance investigations team is also aiding the recovery effort.
Hacker Moving Funds?
Binance’s decision to restrict withdrawals and supervise transactions comes soon after a blockchain security firm, SlowMist, revealed that the hacker was attempting to cash out the stolen assets on exchanges like Huobi.
According to SlowMist, the attacker converted the stolen USDC to ETH and scattered them across different wallets. Some of the ETH was enchased at crypto exchanges FTX and Crypto.com and more recently, Huobi. Earlier, the attacker’s wallet had also engaged on Binance.
At press time, no official statements regarding the withdrawals were made by either FTX or Huobi, although the latter was reportedly assisting the Ronin team with its investigation.