The amount of hacking this year is really outstanding. A new coin has been brought to ruin by the name of Ankr.

Ankr

ANKR is a utility token with more than one use case. It can be used for staking, voting on governance proposals, and as a payment method for accessing services on the ANKR network, such as dApp and protocol deployment. ANKR also serves as a reward for stakers and network participants- source

So apparently, a certain hacker decided to end his year with a blast, mining and minting approximately 20 trillion Ankr Reward Bearing Staked BNB (aBNBc), which is the reward bearing token for BNB staked on the protocol.

According to the analysis from the firm LookonChain, the hacker _{being a sharp kid😂} used different swapping services (Uniswap, Tornado Cash, etc.) to swap and try and hide the funds getting a cash out of about $5 million dollars USDC.

https://twitter.com/lookonchain/status/1598625966640992257?s=20&t=elGcqTcXtrfHrXXUZKrrNw

- lookonchain

Ankr also mentioned that "all underlying assets of staking are safe at this time, and all infrastructure services are unaffected."
So I guessed they came out quite lucky.

https://twitter.com/ankr/status/1598768151340101634?s=20&t=KqdiEwS-U-Oiq8lC5q865Q

- ankr

The hacking was noticed on 12:35am UTC on December 2nd by the on-chain security analysis PeckShield.
I'll have to commend their quick reaction for within an hour of the attack, Ankr confirmed on Twitter that the aBNB token has been exploited and at such all trading of the compromised token would be halted.

https://twitter.com/ankr/status/1598503332477280256?s=20&t=xL-NaO0moyJHOgoFOc59rA

- ankr

Although they were fast in responding, it didn't really help them as the mass minting of their token reduced their trading price by -99.5% from $303.89 to $1.53. According to data gotten from CoinMarketcap, this fall happened in a matter of hours.
Now it's even lower...😭

_{screenshot of mine}

Apparently this isn't the end though..
Thanks to their reserves, they still have assets to get back on their feet

https://twitter.com/ankr/status/1598768146088742912?s=20&t=1OXMC9Qnme0BHzQywGH4Ow

- ankr

.

Hopefully they'll be back fully at 2023😗

Now my thoughts...

I do sometimes wonder how hackers feel after they're true. Is it like a job well done kind of feeling?

Or do they sometimes rethink their actions?
Like someone commented...

https://twitter.com/MyRocksAreSolid/status/1598527833394905089?s=20&t=atXa1EjEV1BGh7jTu2sJmQ

- MyRocksAreSolid

Sometimes I do wonder 🤔...

Anyways it's rather clear that this last few months isn't one of the best for crypto.
I guess this is one more hacker that has enough snow for Christmas 😅