Audit Report Shows BNB Chain, Nomad, Harmony Lose Over $2B So Far

• Audit report hinted that cross-chain bridge attacks since 2021 exceed $2 billion.
• Analysts say the latest hack was due to a vulnerability in message verification.
• Ethereum’s founder previously warned about cross-chain security risks.

As the dust from the Binance bridge hack settles, available data brings the cumulatively lost fund on cross-chain bridge exploits to over two billion dollars.

A web3 security audit firm, BlockSec, published a summary of the sizeable cross-chain bridge attacks that have taken place until now. The report revealed that protocols like BSC Bridge, Nomad, Harmony, PloyNetwork, and more had lost over $2 billion to hackers since July last year.

The latest event on the Binance ecosystem saw the thief walk away with two million units of BNB tokens, equivalent to over half a billion dollars. Analysts say the root cause was a vulnerability in the message verification and that cross-chain bridges have been valuable targets for attackers in recent times.

Previously, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, warned about cross-chain security risks. He argued that the future would be multi-chain and not cross-chain. He also noted that there are fundamental limits to the security of bridges that hop across multiple zones of sovereignty. He, however, clarified:

Note that cross-rollup apps within one zone of sovereignty are still fine, not also that this also is a limit to the vision of the modular blockchain: you can’t just pick and choose a separate data layer and security layer. Your data layer must be your security layer.

Nonetheless, the crypto community appreciated the BNB Chain team’s transparency and how fast it reacted to control the situation. Additionally, the BNB Chain is back in operation after it was temporarily suspended during the attack.