Binance hit by record $6.3 billion crypto hack, scrambles to freeze funds - The Record from Recorded Future News
Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, confirmed Thursday it had been hacked in a $6.3 billion cyber heist attributed to North Korean attackers.
The company said it had frozen just under half of the stolen assets, or around $3 billion, as of early Friday. Hackers began removing funds Thursday, moving assets worth roughly $6.36 billion across 20 blockchains in about 20 minutes.
Breach investigation
According to Binance's initial investigation, the breach "may involve a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions." The company found "no evidence of any wallet private key leak" and promised a detailed technical post-mortem.
We will share a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is complete and the facts are fully verified.
Customer protection
Binance regularly publishes a "proof of reserves" showing its wallets hold enough assets to match every customer's balance. The most recent snapshot showed reserves of more than 100% across listed assets. Although hackers hit some reserve wallets, Binance said it will make up the difference using emergency funds and its own money.
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