16:18Machine-translated from Azerbaijani by AIRead in Azerbaijani
$6.3 Billion Stolen from Binance in Largest Crypto Theft in History
Cryptocurrency began being withdrawn from the Binance exchange’s wallets at around 00:00 on October 30. Richard Teng announced that $6.3 billion worth of cryptocurrency (approximately AZN 10.71 billion) had been stolen. A separate blockchain calculation put the amount at $6.17 billion (approximately AZN 10.49 billion). The incident is considered the largest cryptocurrency theft in history. Binance said its customers’ money was safe and that it would cover all losses.
According to the preliminary investigation, the attack began from a compromised laptop belonging to one of the DevOps engineers. The attacker used that computer to access the system and send unauthorized withdrawal instructions. A subsequent investigation revealed that there were other ways to access the system as well. Binance emphasized that the incident did not occur solely through the exploitation of 1 employee’s privileges and that it had involved sophisticated preparation. No evidence was found that the private keys used to access the wallets had been leaked.
TRM Labs believes that the bulk of the theft took place in just 20 minutes. The attacker emptied Binance wallets on at least 10 blockchains and sent the money to addresses under the attacker’s control. Preparations began at least 36 hours before the incident. The attacker first made 3 small test transfers. The same code was then deployed to wallets known as “hot wallets,” which are connected to the internet and used for daily payments.
TRM Labs, Chainalysis and Elliptic believe the attack may be linked to North Korea. The first 2 companies identified TraderTraitor, a group that had previously targeted cryptocurrency exchanges, as the likely perpetrator. Chainalysis observed that part of the stolen money had been mixed with funds remaining from the previous Bitget attack. The attacker’s use of Tornado Cash, a service that obscures the trail of money transfers, and the tests conducted in advance resembled previous operations. Binance and law enforcement agencies have not yet officially named a suspect.
Binance said approximately $3 billion (approximately AZN 5.1 billion) had been frozen. Elliptic calculated the exact amount at $2.8 billion (approximately AZN 4.76 billion). This is 44 percent of the stolen money, and much of it consists of cryptocurrencies pegged to stable currencies. The remaining $3.3 billion (approximately AZN 5.61 billion) consists mainly of BTC, ETH and XRP. Those funds can only be stopped when they are sent to an exchange or another service. Thousands of automated transactions are being conducted to hide the trail of the money.
The company has a $1.3 billion (approximately AZN 2.21 billion) SAFU emergency reserve fund to cover the losses. In addition, more than $6.34 billion in company funds (approximately AZN 10.78 billion) has been allocated for the incident. Of that amount, $5 billion (approximately AZN 8.5 billion) is held in the same assets as the stolen cryptocurrencies. It was also disclosed that the company’s balance sheet includes SpaceX shares worth more than $1 billion (more than approximately AZN 1.7 billion).
After the attack, Binance suspended all deposit and withdrawal transactions. Authorization for the affected address was also revoked. Once the investigation is complete, the company will publish a technical report and an updated Proof of Reserves document. The new theft is more than 4 times the approximately $1.5 billion (approximately AZN 2.55 billion) stolen from the Bybit exchange last year. Binance was also attacked in 2019, when it lost $40 million (approximately AZN 68 million).