How the Binance hack happened and who was behind it
Investigators say several factors may have been involved, including a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, with signs pointing to North Korean actors being responsible.
Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, experienced a massive hack resulting in the theft of $6.3 billion (€5.6 billion). Experts believe a North Korean hacking group, known as TraderTraitor, was responsible for the "biggest hack in history". The attack occurred over a span of four hours, with hackers gaining access to several wallets via a compromised laptop and transferring funds to their own wallets.
Binance managed to freeze $2.7 billion of the stolen funds, but the remaining $3.1 billion remains untouched. The company has suspended deposits and withdrawals, revoked the affected address authorisation, and is working with law enforcement and blockchain partners to trace and recover the stolen funds.
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- Live updates: Binance $6.3B hack linked to North Korea’s TraderTraitor cointelegraph.com
- What we know so far about the Binance hack bbc.co.uk
- How the Binance hack happened and who was behind it? euronews.com
- Blockchain intelligence firms link North Korea to $6.3B hack on Binance winnipegfreepress.com
- TRM Labs attributes the Binance hack to North Korea-based TraderTraitor, which drained ~$6.36B from Binance wallets across 10 blockchains, mostly in ~20 minutes (Tom Westbrook/Reuters) reuters.com
- Binance "temporarily suspended" all deposits and withdrawals as it investigates security issues and works with law enforcement; Binance.US says it's unaffected (George Steer/Financial Times) ft.com
- Circle, Tether freeze funds impacted by potential Binance 'security issue' cnbc.com
- Blockchain intelligence firms link North Korea to $6.3B hack on Binance npr.org
