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Binance said it faced a complex attack involving multiple intrusion points, which is estimated to have affected approximately US$6.3 billion of funds. It has seized nearly half its assets and is cooperating with law enforcement agencies in the investigation.
World’s largest daily trading volumecryptocurrency Exchange Binance said today it is working hard to deal with a “sophisticated attack” that affected approximately $6.3 billion of funds and involved multiple intrusion points, and has frozen nearly half of the funds to prevent a large-scale theft.
Agence France-Presse reported that Binance said that “a subsequent investigation revealed other points of intrusion.” it’s like thinkinghacker Initial findings of an attack through only a damaged laptop showed varying results.
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Binance previously issued several consecutive messages, sometimes with contradictory content. It insisted that “user funds are completely safe” and said it would “bear all losses.”
The company confirmed through its X account in Latin America that “the total amount affected is estimated to be approximately US$6.3 billion.”
This is four times the previous highest damage amount caused by similar cyber attacks. The previous record was the theft of US$1.5 billion from the Bybit platform in February last year.
Binance also warned that this number “could continue to grow, and our team is working closely with law enforcement agencies, issuers, blockchain intelligence companies, and industry partners to track and freeze more assets.”
The platform said it had seized approximately US$3 billion of affected assets.
The aforementioned Bybit theft was believed to be the work of Trader Traitor, a hacker group linked to North Korea.
TRM Labs, an American blockchain analytics company, said yesterday that based on “substantial on-chain and off-chain intelligence,” the company is “highly confident” that the Binance hack was also planned by TraderTrader.
“Many features of this attack are consistent with previous thefts linked to North Korea,” TRM said.
TraderTraitor is believed to be part of the Lazarus Group, which was infamous for hacking Sony Pictures in 2014. Lazarus Group’s move was in retaliation for the Sony Pictures film “The Interview,” which mocked North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
After news of the cyber attack broke, the price of most major cryptocurrencies, except stablecoins, declined. By definition, the price of such currencies can fluctuate only within a narrow range.
Bitcoin and Ethereum fell by about 5% and about 6% respectively, while Binance platform token BNB fell by about 10%.
The attack on Binance comes as many observers are concerned that the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) models could break cryptography and make information technology security protocols no longer reliable.
