Cryptocurrency
[loss] $19M+
"Binance Bungles Accounting for Helium Tokens, Overpays Clients Millions"
Primary Source ↗Financial Loss
$19.0M
(19,000,000 USD)
Blockchain(s)
Ethereum
Incident Details
Helium has two different tokens: HNT, which is paid out to people who run Helium hotspots, and MOBILE, which is paid to those maintaining the new Helium 5G network. However, Binance erroneously treated both tokens as HNT within their exchange. As a result, anyone who sent MOBILE to Binance wound up with that same number of HNT tokens in their wallet — a big benefit, given that HTN has traded between $4 and $7 this past month, and MOBILE is not yet easily tradable.Binance distributed around 4.8 million HNT before discovering and patching the bug, valued at around $19 million.
Total loss estimated at $19,000,000.
Technical Details
- Initial Attack Vector
- Software bug / unintentional loss
- Vendor / Product
- Binance bug with Helium token
Timeline
- 2022-09-16 Breach occurred
- 2022-09-16 Publicly disclosed