Binance 'potential security issue' sees $2.54 billion frozen
Binance has frozen approximately $3 billion in assets following a security breach that impacted an estimated $6.3 billion. The exchange has pledged to cover all user losses using its internal funds while working with law enforcement to investigate the incident.
Why it matters
This incident represents one of the largest security breaches in cryptocurrency history, raising significant concerns about exchange security and asset protection.
Binance said Friday that a security incident had an estimated impact of $6.3 billion, with around $3 billion in cryptocurrency assets frozen so far, and pledged to cover all losses.
The company's co-CEO Richard Teng said the exchange would cover all losses from the $6.3 billion hack using its SAFU fund and company funds, with about $3 billion in stolen assets frozen on-chain so far.
The world's largest crypto exchange said an initial investigation suggests "the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions."
Later in the day, Teng said the attack involved a complex process rather than the misuse of a single engineer's permissions, underscoring that the investigation had not attributed responsibility to any individual.
He added that there was no evidence of any wallet private key leak.
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9 other newsrooms covered this event. We read each version separately.
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