Last year today, PancakeSwap, a decentralised cryptocurrency exchange, had been hacked.
According to a tweet from PancakeSwap's official Twitter account last year on this day, the exchange informed its users that there was a chance that their exchange had been DNS hijacked. The exchange later confirmed this news in a subsequent tweet. The exchange asked its users to not use the site in the meanwhile and also instructed them to not share their seed phrase with anyone.
This news was also later confirmed by Changpeng Zhao of the Binance exchange.
A “DNS hijack” is when an attacker reroutes traffic toward a malicious server; in this case, the “hijacked site” was after credentials for users’ accounts on the decentralised crypto exchange.
Unlike traditional cryptocurrency exchanges, where assets are traded through a central authority, a decentralised exchange uses smart contracts to enable money to flow directly between traders. Decentralized exchanges, often known as DeFi protocols, are non-custodial systems for Bitcoin management.
In this case, PancakeSwap's smart contracts had not been compromised. The attack was limited to only to the front-end of the website and as long as the users’ seed words are secure, their funds are secure as well.