Binance Estimates $6.3 Billion Hacked in Crypto’s Biggest-Ever Heist

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, halted all deposits and withdrawals following a massive security breach, estimated to have cost the company $6.3 billion. The majority of this loss, around $3 billion, has been frozen by the exchange. This incident is considered the largest crypto hack in history. The breach began with analysts noticing large on-chain transfers from the exchange.

Spreek flagged around $3.55 billion entering a single unlabeled wallet, with nearly $900 million subsequently split among other wallets. Binance, Coinbase, and Blockaid are investigating suspicious outflows totaling up to $5.8 billion from Binance's hot wallets across Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Avalanche. Binance co-founder Yi He confirmed the company was aware of the potential security issue and was investigating the matter.

The initial investigation suggests a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer allowed an attacker to access a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawals. No evidence of a private key leak was found. Researchers from TRM Labs and Pangolin Intelligence believe the attack was carried out by a North Korean hacking group, though Binance has not confirmed this attribution.

Tether and Circle quickly froze over $1.79 billion in USDT and USDC linked to the incident, with another $200 million halted by Ripple. Binance has promised to cover all losses related to the hack using its SAFU emergency fund and company funds. DeFi platforms and markets have also responded by suspending transactions and pausing new deposits and borrows to prevent further losses.

Binance has not yet announced when deposits and withdrawals will resume, urging users to rely on official channels for updates.