Binance wallets drained of about $6.3 billion in roughly 20 minutes
Original title: The $6.3 Billion Binance Hack Was Pulled Off in Just 20 Minutes
Tracing firms suspect North Korea’s TraderTraitor, which Binance has not confirmed; about $2.8 billion, mostly stablecoins, has been frozen.
On October 29, attackers drained about $6.3 billion from Binance hot wallets across at least ten blockchains, including Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tron, and Solana, with most of the theft in about 20 minutes. Binance halted deposits and withdrawals, said losses will be covered, and later said the incident involved more than a compromised engineer’s laptop. Elliptic, TRM Labs, and Chainalysis link the activity, with differing specificity, to North Korean hackers and TraderTraitor. Roughly $3.3 billion in Bitcoin, Ether, and XRP cannot be frozen, those firms say.
Unconfirmed: North Korean and TraderTraitor attribution comes from tracing firms, not Binance or law enforcement.
- TRM Labs says preparation began at least 36 hours before the theft.
- Binance’s first theory was a compromised engineer’s laptop, then more breach points.
- Chainalysis saw Binance funds commingled with proceeds of a recent Bitget exploit.
- Elliptic puts frozen funds at about $2.8 billion, or about 44 percent.
Impact: About $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency stolen from exchange hot wallets
- ATT&CK
- T1657 Financial Theft
- Threat actors
- TraderTraitor
- Victims
- Binance
- Organizations
- EllipticTRM LabsChainalysis
- Countries
- North Korea
From the original article
4 min read at wired.com
Multiple crypto-tracing firms say notorious North Korean hackers TraderTraitor may be behind the largest digital heist in history—with billions of crypto likely gone for good.
By Matt Burgess · wired.com
A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.