Binance Halts Trading After Engineer's Laptop Compromise Puts $6.3 Billion at Risk

Crypto exchange Binance has halted all trading, deposits and withdrawals after discovering that unknown parties compromised a worker's laptop and used it to make large unauthorised transactions. The company first said it was investigating a potential security issue and insisted user funds were safe. It also warned customers to be wary of scams and to avoid unofficial links, messages or requests for account information.

Binance's initial investigation suggests the incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which let an attacker reach a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions. The company froze $2.5 billion in assets and said that figure could rise as it works with law enforcement, issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners. It later raised the amount it believes is at risk to $6.3 billion. Binance says it has found no evidence that any wallet private key was leaked, and it has promised to cover any customer losses.

Binance has not explained how the attackers got into the engineer's laptop. According to The Register, the limited detail makes it hard to rule out phishing or a supply chain attack on a software package the developer used. Binance says it will share more once it knows exactly what happened. At the time of reporting, trading had not resumed.