World’s largest crypto exchange hit by world’s largest heist - WRAL

Hackers stole over $6 billion in cryptocurrency on Thursday, shattering the record for the largest such heist as multiple investigators pointed the finger at North Korea. As of Thursday night in the US, a team of cryptocurrency firms had managed to freeze about $3 billion of the stolen loot amid a frenetic battle with the hackers to find and control the digital money.

The hackers broke into digital wallets held at Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. Binance said late Thursday that its initial investigation indicates that the hack went through an engineer's laptop, "which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions."

Complex Attack

On Friday, Binance co-CEO Richard Tend said on X that the attack was not a "one-click" action, but rather a complex process. He added that the investigation has not attributed responsibility to any individual nor found evidence of any wallet private key leak.

Binance said it would "cover all losses" from "the company's funds" and an emergency assets fund, adding "user funds are safe." The crypto exchange also said it had "temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while security checks are completed; revoked the affected address authorization; [and] engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds."

North Korean Involvement

Analysts were shocked by the amount of money impacted. Crypto-tracing firm TRM Labs attributed the heist to an elite North Korean hacking unit, "based on robust on and off-chain intelligence." Pangolin Intelligence, another blockchain-tracking firm based in Singapore, said it also believed that a North Korean hacking unit was behind the heist.

"Analyzing the on-chain activity related to this hack and correlating with information gathered from previous known incidents [involving the North Korean cyber unit]" led to the attribution, said an analyst with Pangolin Intelligence, who did not want to be named for privacy reasons.

Market Impact

Chainalysis, another crypto-tracking company, said it was monitoring stolen funds "moving across multiple blockchains," including Bitcoin and Ethereum. A Chainalysis spokesperson told CNN the firm had "high confidence" North Korea was behind the hack.

Prices of Bitcoin and Ether, the most widely-traded cryptocurrencies, plummeted following news of the Binance breach, but regained some losses to trade about 2-3% lower midday Friday in Hong Kong.

Background

If North Korea is proven to be the culprit, it would be little surprise to US law enforcement officials and private experts. North Korean hackers were blamed for the previous record-high crypto hack, when they allegedly stole $1.5 billion from Bybit, another major cryptocurrency exchange.

North Korea's formidable hacking teams are a key source of revenue for the nuclear-armed, sanctions-battered regime, according to current and former US and South Korean officials. Pyongyang-linked hackers have stolen billions of dollars from banks and cryptocurrency firms in the last several years.

Unlike platforms for trading stocks, cryptocurrency exchanges tend to hold digital assets on their users' behalf, which make them more vulnerable to hackers and theft, particularly given a lack of regulatory oversight within the relatively nascent industry.

Binance was co-founded in 2017 by Canadian national Changpeng Zhao, becoming the world's largest crypto trading platform within a year of its launch. However, Zhao stepped down in 2023 after pleading guilty to violating anti-money laundering laws in the US. He was sentenced to four months in federal prison, and was pardoned by President Donald Trump in October last year.