Binance $6.3B (North Korea?) hack: withdrawals paused 48 hours, Bitcoin falls
Leading crypto exchange Binance reported early Friday that approximately $6.3 billion in crypto had gone missing in a hack of its systems. For now, all client withdrawals from Binance have been halted (for an expected 48 hours), although deposits remain operating as normal.
Bitcoin’s price has reacted negatively, and with some volatility, to the news involving the largest crypto exchange. Bitcoin is now down about 3% on the day at $78,381, and had reached as low as $76,328 before somewhat recovering, after trading above $80,000 most of Thursday.
Binance said that its initial investigation suggests that 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. Security experts were pointing a finger at North Korean hackers as being responsible for the hack.
Binance further reported that it has found no evidence of any wallet private key leak. The company will share a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is complete and the facts are fully verified.
The estimated total impact sits at around $6.3 billion. Binance has worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with ~$3 billion frozen on-chain so far. Binance said it will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and the company’s funds. Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) is an emergency insurance and reserve fund created by Binance in 2018 to protect user assets during extreme security incidents or hacks.
Binance reiterated that user funds are safe. It will also publish an updated Proof of Reserves once the remediation is complete.
As an immediate precaution, Binance has:
- temporarily suspended deposits (since restarted) and withdrawals while security checks are completed,
- revoked the affected address authorisation, and
- engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds.
Binance reported that its teams are working around the clock to resolve this issue safely and thoroughly. It is also working closely with law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of the criminals, and to bring them to justice.