Binance says North Korean hackers stole $6.3B through a months-long scheme with fake LinkedIn job interviews and an ad campaign to deliver malicious software (Jeff John Roberts/Fortune)

Binance disclosed on Tuesday that North Korean hackers executed a $6.3 billion heist, which Fortune describes as the largest in crypto history. The company revealed that the months-long scheme utilized a combination of social engineering and malicious software. According to Fortune, hackers targeted a Binance engineer on LinkedIn by posing as a Project Director and arranging fake job interviews.

This process was designed to persuade the employee to download an assignment that allowed attackers to invade the company's systems.

The breach also involved an ad campaign that tricked another engineer into clicking an internet advertisement for a tampered version of the Homebrew software package. Fortune reports that while the engineer did not download the software through regular channels, the ad led to the malicious version.

Following the hack, Binance temporarily suspended withdrawals as a precaution to contain the incident and perform security checks. PC Gamer reports that after the exchange reopened on Sunday, customers withdrew $4.649 billion in less than 10 hours. While roughly $3 billion of the $6.3 billion loss was frozen in transit, the remaining amount was covered by the company.

As of November 3, PC Gamer notes that the exchange's total cashflow remained a net negative of -$5 billion, though deposits began to approach the level of withdrawals.

Brief written by urgent.news from Techmeme, Fortune, Insurance Journal, This Is Money, PC Gamer — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.