Crypto startup Ankr says a former employee instigated the $5 million theft from its platform earlier this month.

A malicious hacker exploited a smart contract for one of Ankr’s staking rewards tokens, aBNBc, on Dec. 2. They’d manipulated a bug in its code that enabled unlimited minting of the token, deployed to Binance-branded BNB Chain.

(By SHALINI NAGARAJAN)