BurgerSwap Hit by Flash Loan Attack Netting Over $7M

Theft
28 May 2021

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol BurgerSwap suffered a flash loan attack that saw hackers make off with around $7.2 million of altcoins.

  • BurgerSwap is the latest DeFi protocol on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) to experience an attack of this nature.
  • The attackers created their own "Fake Coin" and formed a trading pair with the protocol's native token BURGER, ultimately changing the latter's price, BurgerSwap said in a series of tweets.
  • The exploit led to the theft of some $7.2 million in altcoins, including $3.2 million in BURGER, $1.6 million in Wrapped Binance Coin (WBNB) and $1.4 million in tether.
  • BURGER is currently trading at $6.75, a drop of 27% from its 24-hour high of $9.24, according to CoinMarketCap data.
  • Recent exploits of DeFi projects built on BSC include an attack for $11 million on auto yield farming protocol bEarn Fi and one on yield-farming aggregator PancakeBunny that may have been worth as much as $3 million.
  • The frequency with which these are occurring on BSC is causing alarm in the developer community.
  • "BSC is a public permissionless infrastructure so anybody can deploy projects there,” Samy Karim, Binance coordinator of business and ecosystem development , said at Consensus 2021. “You have malicious actors there and hacks, and exploits in DeFi are not new and definitely not unique to BSC.”

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