Venus Protocol User Loses $13.5M to a Suspected Phishing Scam on BNB Chain

A Venus Protocol user has lost $13.5 million to a suspected phishing scam that occurred through the BNB Chain native money ￰3￱ to a PeckShield Security alert the victim approved a malicious transaction and granted token approval to the attacker’s address (0x7fd8…202a) which facilitated the asset ￰4￱ initially reported $27 million in assets drained but later found the exact figure was approximately $13.5 million

as the initial estimates did not exclude the attacker’s debt position. ￰0￱ The stolen assets are still held in the hacker’s wallet address and haven’t been converted to other tokens or made any move towards cashing ￰5￱ Protocol Confirms: “User Attacked Smart Contract Safe” Venus Protocol’s official X account broke its silence and told the community that they are actively investigating the suspicious ￰6￱ to the statement “ Venus is currently paused following security ￰7￱ will keep you all updated as soon as we know more. “ Minutes later the protocol confirmed that Venus Protocol has NOT been exploited

but a user of the protocol was attacked meaning the user fell victim to a phishing attack while Venus’ smart contract was not compromised. ￰1￱ The Venus native governance token XVS sharply fell by over 5% following news of the attack and has slightly recovered to $6.01 at press time.) on its DeFi platform down from over $6.5 billion TVL at its peak in 2021 making it a core part of BNB Chain’s DeFi ￰8￱ it comes to fees generated on Binance Smart Chain (formerly BNB Chain)

Venus Protocol generates the second-most cumulative fees of over $137 million only bettered by PancakeSwap with over $3.2 billion.). ￰2￱ The only other major attacks on BNB Chain date back over two years including the infamous Binance hack in 2022 which saw over two million BNB tokens worth over $570 million ￰9￱ 2024

Bankroll Status a BNB Chain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) platform suffered a significant breach resulting in a $230,000 ￰10￱ hacking tactics appeared to follow the same pattern used in previous DualPools ￰11￱ to a recent joint report from BNB Chain and Hacken a trusted blockchain security auditor

there has been a 70% drop in losses from $161 million in 2023 to $47 million in 2024.