Binance, one of the most widely used cryptocurrency exchanges, has published its first account of the Oct. 29 attack that drained about $6.34 billion in digital assets from its wallets. The F
Binance, one of the most widely used cryptocurrency exchanges, has published its first account of the Oct. 29 attack that drained about $6.34 billion in digital assets from its wallets.
The FBI says North Korea was behind it.
“This should not have happened,” Binance wrote in its initial incident report.
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According to the report, the groundwork was laid in June, when a Binance wallet engineer downloaded a tampered copy of a common developer tool.
That exposed him and his teammates to the attackers.
In September, a second engineer was approached on a job-hunting site by a fake recruiter.
After two rounds of interviews, he was asked to download a coding “assignment” onto his work computer. It contained hidden malware that security tools didn’t catch.
On Oct. 29, the attackers used stolen credentials to reach the internal service that approves Binance’s outgoing transactions.
Within hours, they had moved XRP, SOL, OP, Bitcoin and ETH out of the exchange’s hot wallets, which are wallets kept online to process withdrawals.
Binance says customers won’t bear the loss.
It says it set aside more than 100% of the stolen amount and had replaced 98% of the affected tokens as of Oct. 31.
About $2.85 billion has been frozen or intercepted so far, according to the report. Binance says it has rebuilt the affected systems and plans an independent security review.
Note: This is a developing story and will be updated shortly.
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