Binance confirms $6.3 billion crypto theft and freezes about half
Original title: Binance hit by record $6.3 billion crypto hack, scrambles to freeze funds
Assets moved across 20 blockchains in about 20 minutes; Binance says customer losses will be covered.
Binance confirmed Thursday that attackers stole about $6.3 billion and said it is suspending deposits and withdrawals while it responds. Early Friday the exchange said it had frozen just under half of the stolen assets, around $3 billion. Its initial investigation says the breach may involve a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop used to reach a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawals, with no evidence of a wallet private-key leak. Chainalysis and TRM Labs both said they had high confidence that North Korean hackers were responsible.
Unconfirmed: Binance says a compromised laptop may be involved, and North Korean attribution is the analytics firms’ high-confidence assessment, not a finished company finding.
- Roughly $6.36 billion moved across 20 blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, XRP Ledger, and Solana.
- Binance said its latest proof of reserves showed more than 100% backing before the theft.
- The company plans to use emergency funds and its own money to make up the difference.
- It will publish an updated proof of reserves after remediation and a technical post-mortem later.
Impact: About $6.3 billion in crypto withdrawn from exchange wallets
- Victims
- Binance
- Organizations
- ChainalysisTRM Labs
- Countries
- North Korea
From the original article
1 min read at therecord.mediaBinance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, confirmed Thursday that it had been hacked in a $6. 3 billion cyber heist that blockchain investigators are blaming on North Korea.
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