Binance suspended withdrawals after a hack that the exchange put at about $6.3 billion. Blockchain investigators link the theft to North Korea's TraderTraitor unit, while Binance says it has frozen some $3 billion of affected assets.
Binance suspended withdrawals after the exchange fell victim to what the Financial Times called an industry-record heist. The exchange put the total impact of the hack at about $6.3 billion and said it had frozen some $3 billion of affected assets so far.
Co-founder Yi He said Binance expected to allow withdrawals again within 48 hours. Founder Changpeng Zhao, meanwhile, told customers their "funds are safe", according to the Financial Times.
Investigators point to North Korea's TraderTraitor
TRM Labs attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking unit associated with Lazarus, with high confidence. Binance has not confirmed who carried out the theft, according to crypto.news.
TRM traced about $6.36 billion leaving Binance-controlled wallets across ten blockchain networks. Most of the funds moved in about 20 minutes, with around $3.79 billion transferred on Ethereum.
A compromised laptop and frozen stablecoins
Binance said its initial investigation suggested hackers compromised an engineer's laptop and withdrew funds from the platform. The exchange found no evidence that private keys were breached.
Blockaid's technical investigation, as reported by crypto.news, identified 50 EIP-7702 authorizations targeting Binance 14, one of the exchange's busiest hot wallets. Only one authorization succeeded.
Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino said his company had frozen about $1.5bn of USDT, and Circle head Jeremy Allaire said $800mn of its coin had been frozen.
Bitcoin slips, liquidations top $1.5 billion
Bitcoin fell about 4 per cent in the hours after the hack emerged before regaining ground to trade above $78,000.
Crypto.news reported that Bitcoin briefly fell below $77,000. Total liquidations across the derivatives market exceeded $1.5 billion over 24 hours.
Binance pledged to cover customer losses using its SAFU fund and company resources, and said a full report on the attack's cause will follow.
Sources: Financial Times, crypto.news
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