BanglaPress Desk: The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has fallen victim to the largest theft in the history of cryptocurrency. In a lightning-fast operation lasting just 20 minutes, hackers siphoned off digital assets worth approximately $6.3 billion. The suddenness of the incident and the staggering scale of the theft have triggered widespread panic across the global cryptocurrency market.
Experts, having analyzed the company’s operations and blockchain records, noted that the attack specifically targeted the wallets Binance uses to facilitate daily customer transactions. In an initial statement on the social media platform X, Binance suggested that the breach might have originated from the hacking of a staff member’s laptop. However, subsequent investigations revealed vulnerabilities and unauthorized access points across multiple layers of the company’s security infrastructure.
Explaining how such a massive breach occurred, U.S.-based blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs and prominent Hong Kong-based lawyer Joshua Chu stated that the hackers gained control over Binance’s "signing infrastructure"—the system responsible for authorizing transactions. In other words, rather than simply stealing the "keys" to the vault, the attackers seized control of the entire digital mechanism that issues instructions for the release of funds. The assault, which began around 8:00 PM Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on Thursday, lasted only 20 minutes—long enough to empty Binance’s primary wallets.
Addressing the situation, Binance Co-CEO Richard Teng sought to reassure the exchange’s users, stating that the company maintains a $1 billion Bitcoin reserve—known as a "Secure Asset Fund"—designed to protect customers. He confirmed that this fund, along with the company’s own capital, will be used to provide full compensation for any losses. However, a new wave of tension has emerged regarding the current location of this massive sum and who might be holding it. Experts note that nearly half of the stolen funds consisted of various "stablecoins" (such as USDT and USDC). A key feature of these assets is that the issuing entities can remotely disable or freeze them. Immediately following the incident, organizations like Tether, Circle, Ripple, and "World Liberty Financial"—a crypto venture linked to Donald Trump’s family—acted swiftly to freeze approximately half of the stolen funds, preventing the hackers from converting them into cash.
Conversely, the remaining assets—Bitcoin and Ether, valued at roughly $2.4 billion—remain beyond reach; as these lack a central governing authority, they cannot be frozen. To move these funds elsewhere, the hackers are employing sophisticated automated tactics and rotating wallets, attempting to mislead law enforcement and investigative agencies.
While Binance has not yet officially identified the perpetrators, several U.S.-based analytics firms point toward North Korean hackers. TRM Labs asserts that the modus operandi of this attack on Binance is identical to an assault carried out by North Korean hackers against another crypto exchange, Bybit, last year. North Korea, however, has consistently denied any involvement in such cyberattacks or cryptocurrency thefts.
Throughout the past year, approximately $2.9 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen across 150 cyberattacks globally. Yet, the disappearance of $6.3 billion in a single strike against a platform as large and secure as Binance has sent a major shockwave through the entire digital currency market. On Friday, as the values of major cryptocurrencies plummeted, investors began scrambling to withdraw their funds from the market. Source: Reuters
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