XLink, a well-known Bitcoin blockchain bridge, is preparing to make a comeback following a temporary shutdown due to a $10 million hack on May 15.
The security breach affected XLink’s Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain (BSC) endpoints. The breach was disclosed by the XLink team on May 15, and normal operations are set to resume on May 17.
The attacker exploited compromised private keys through a phishing scheme, which allowed them to control the BSC and Ethereum endpoints and withdraw approximately $4.3 million without authorization. However, XLink stated that a white hat hacker was able to recover the stolen assets.
Cointelegraph reached out to XLink for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication. XLink’s official statement confirmed that only the BSC and Ethereum endpoints were affected by the exploit.
Although the BSC funds have been recovered, around $5 million worth of LunarCrush tokens remain locked on the Ethereum blockchain. XLink is working closely with the LunarCrush team to secure these funds, and the majority of the $5 million has been recovered or secured.
XLink took immediate action following the incident, temporarily suspending all operations on the bridge to conduct a thorough investigation. The investigation was conducted in collaboration with security partners, including Ancilia, and Binance team liaisons.
XLink has advised all users who interacted with the compromised contracts to revoke any approved spending limits to mitigate further risk to their funds. Detailed instructions and links were provided for ETH and BSC users.
Failure to revoke approved spending limits puts users at risk of losing their funds to the attacker.
In a separate incident, pump.fun, a Solana memecoin creation tool, was targeted by an ex-employee who allegedly took almost $2 million through a “bonding curve” attack. The protocol’s smart contracts have been declared safe, and victims of the attack will have their liquidity fully restored.
In other news, a UK cannabis millionaire is conducting “deals on wheels” using cryptocurrency.