Binance Confirms $6.3bn Crypto Theft, the Largest Cyber Heist on Record

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has confirmed it suffered the largest cyber-attack in history, with $6.3bn in cryptocurrency stolen. The company says it has frozen $3bn of the stolen funds and will cover all losses using its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and company money. It has stressed repeatedly that customer funds remain safe.

In a statement on October 30, Binance said the attacker's entry point may have been a compromised laptop belonging to a development and operations (DevOps) engineer. This allegedly let the attacker reach a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions. The company has since revised that view, saying further investigation found additional points of breach. It described the incident as a complex attack and says it has found no evidence that any wallet private keys were leaked. A full technical post-mortem will be published once the investigation ends.

TRM Labs, Elliptic and Chainalysis have attributed the attack with high confidence to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking group. Binance temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals, along with some Binance Alpha trading activities, as a precaution. Its latest update says deposits have resumed normal operations. The company is working with law enforcement and industry partners to recover assets, and plans to publish an updated proof of reserves after remediation work is complete.