BNB Chain reveals root cause of $13k X account hack

BNB Chain has discovered the root cause of the X account hack which resulted in a loss amounting to $13,000. The team claims that all users have been fully compensated.
Summary

• BNB Chain confirmed that all 13 users affected by the Oct. 1 X account hack have been fully reimbursed in USDT, covering total losses of around $13,000 caused by a phishing attack.
• Internal investigations revealed that the breach occurred through a phishing link, prompting BNB Chain to strengthen its security measures, though the team has not disclosed any efforts to identify or recover funds from the hacker.

In a recent post shared on X, the account declared that all users who were affected by the social media hack that took place on Oct. 1 have been fully compensated for their losses. The transfers were made by the BNB Chain in the form of USDT.

The largest compensation transfer was made to an address held by a user who lost $6,586, while the smallest transfer amount was valued at $1.13 in USDT (USDT). In total, 13 users have been compensated for the loss of funds amounting to around $13,000 due to a hacker who infiltrated the BNB (BNB) Chain official account on X.

Along with the update regarding user compensations, the account also used the opportunity to unveil the root cause of the social media-based hack based on internal investigations. According to the post, the hacked managed to gain control of the account through a phishing link.

The link has since been identified, contained and removed, however the damage was already done. Moving forward, the team vows to take the steps necessary to ensure it is protected from similar threats. However, it did not reveal any attempts to track down the actor behind it nor plans to recover the stolen funds.

“Following the incident, the team has implemented additional security measures to prevent similar breaches and further strengthen account protection,” said the BNB Chain team in its recent post.

The announcement appears to have little impact on the price of BNB. At press time, the token has fallen from the $1,100 threshold as it stabilizes around $1,090. Within the past 24 hours, BNB has dropped by 1.7%, continuing its week-long decline of 3.29%.

What happened to BNB Chain’s X account?

On Oct. 1, the official BNB Chain account on X was compromised by an unknown party. The hack resulted in the account spamming its timeline with posts promoting a fake BNB airdrop event. Each post contained a malicious link marked “bnbchain.org” that could infiltrate users’ wallets when clicked on.

The hacker continued to post phishing links until around 06:00 AM UTC when posts promoting the airdrops became unavailable.

At the time, many users started speculating on the safety of X accounts, considering BNB Chain was an account with a golden check mark it should have been more resistant to hacks. Some users urged the BNB team to suspend the account and force a logout of all authenticator apps still linked to the handle.

A few hours after the hack at, the BNB Chain team announced that it had successfully regained control of the account and erased the posts shared by the hacker. The team also promised to fully compensate users who were affected by the exploit.

Upon preliminary investigations, the team surmised that the attackers shared ten phishing links which led to $8,000 in losses across all chains and a single user loss of $6,500.

In a separate move, the attacker exploited a phishing contract by depositing $17,800 and before rug-pulling on meme tokens valued at $22,000, earning around $4,000 in profit. Combined with the earlier exploit, these transactions brought the hacker’s total gains to roughly $13,000.

After the incident, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao highlighted the fact that the BNB community rallied together to pump the hacker’s memecoin called “4” after the rug-pull. Users had reportedly raised the memecoin’s value by 500% before letting it drop in value.