Binance’s CEO Issues Reflections Following his ‘Exploit’ Tweet That Created Panic

Binance’s founder and CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, issued his “reflections” via Twitter Tuesday following his erroneous tweet about Uniswap V3 on the Ethereum blockchain being exploited, with the attacker stealing 4295 ETH. 

Zhao clarified his side of the story in a series of nine tweets in response to a tweet he sent out Monday emphasizing that Uniswap was hacked. In reality, it was a phishing attack where the attacker deployed an airdrop bait to trick users. It had nothing to do with the Uniswap protocol, but rather users utilizing it. 

Here is the initial tweet Zhao sent out falsely alerting the community. 

Zhao explained that when his team contacted him about a potential exploit, he felt the best decision for the crypto community was to act quickly and send out a tweet about the situation. 

Here is the message his team sent him. 

He noted that he could have waited for Uniswap to report back to him, or even await a response from Ethereum’s creator Vitalik Buterin, but felt he could have lost valuable time which could have hurt millions of people. 

The attack Zhao referenced was a phishing attack where the attacker sent out a malicious airdrop to 73,399 wallets. The message claimed to airdrop UNI tokens to liquidity providers (LP) based on the number of fake LP tokens they received. LPs supply their assets on Uniswap in return for rewards. 

Engaging with that airdrop message gave the underlying smart contract permission to transfer assets out of and gain full control of a user’s wallet. The attacker was then able to transfer funds that user had into another wallet. 

While CZ slightly miscalculated the severity of the message he received from his security team, he noted that the response from Uniswap was quick and on point. 

Author: Tyler Irvin

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