Binance Smart Chain DeFi Project Hacked for $31 Million

Nivesh Rustgi

Mar. 4, 2021

Meerkat Finance on Binance Smart Chain has allegedly run off with more than $31 million in a bold hack.

Hackers Rig Smart Contract on Binance Smart Chain for $31 Million

Shutterstock cover by Constantin Stanciu

Key Takeaways

A yield farming project on BSC has been hacked for $31 million.
Their website, twitter account, and telegram channel are all down, suggesting a rug pull by creators.
The hackers are using DeFi avenues to move the stolen tokens.

The BNB-BUSD yield farming “Vault 1” of the DeFi application Meerkat finance, a clone of Yearn Finance on Binance Smart Chain, was drained for $31 million this morning.

Meerkat Finance Hackers Tinker With Smart Contract

The hackers implemented a change in the ownership of the smart contract address on Meerkat Finance at 9 am UTC. Soon after, they began withdrawing from the smart contract to multiple addresses.

The hacker’s primary BNB address is identified on the blockchain, tagged as “FakePhishing17” on BSCscan, which received 73,635.23 BNB worth $17.67 million. The remaining $13.9 million in BUSD was sent to other addresses in smaller amounts.

At press time, the FakePhishing17 address has also moved the BNB to other wallets in seven transactions of 5,000 BNB each, one in 10,000 BNB, one transaction over 23,000 BNB, and other small transactions.

Numerous users of the platform have reached out on the Binance community page lamenting their losses.

According to media reports, the Meerkat Finance team made a brief note about the hack in Telegram but have since disappeared from all social media platforms. Their website and Twitter accounts are disabled, and the Telegram group is now deleted too.

Distressed users have reached out to Binance CEO Chanpeng Zhao, hoping that the CEO can track down the money. CZ has not replied to any comment on Twitter.

Nonetheless, the activity on the hacker addresses shows that the transactions are primarily conducted using DeFi avenues like PancakeSwap instead of moving to a centralized exchange.

Disclosure: The author held Bitcoin at the time of press.

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