Binance Says Hackers Used Well-Known Tricks to Carry Out a $6.34 Billion Heist

Binance announced on Tuesday that hackers stole $6.34 billion from the cryptocurrency exchange in just 20 minutes. The breach was traced back to an engineer who fell for a fake job interview and downloaded malicious software. The hackers then gained access to the company's network, exploited an internal AI tool, and obtained control of a wallet signing service, allowing them to make unauthorized transactions.

Binance apologized for the disruption and said it had set aside funds to cover the losses while replacing or rebuilding impacted systems. The attack was attributed to the North Korean hacker group TraderTraitor, which has stolen over $1.5 billion in a previous heist. The FBI linked TraderTraitor to the Binance hack on October 31.

Binance's security team had previously detected and prevented 57 suspected North Korea-linked cyber threats in 2026. The hackers' activities began in June when an engineer downloaded a tampered Homebrew installation, and in September, another engineer attended a fake job interview, leading to the download of malicious code. On October 29, the attackers used stolen login details to gain access to the engineers' computers and launched the attack within minutes.