The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced on Thursday a security incident in which attackers likely drained a large amount of cryptocurrencies from its so-called hot wallets. As a precaution, the company froze digital assets worth more than 2.5 billion dollars to prevent further theft, and temporarily suspended all deposits and withdrawals on the platform. France24 ↗
Estimates of the total damage vary among different sources. While Binance spoke of 2.5 to 3 billion dollars frozen, the analytics company Chainalysis estimated the total scope of the theft at nearly six billion dollars, which could represent the largest cryptocurrency theft in history. According to some reports, during approximately forty minutes, funds worth up to 6.3 billion dollars were transferred to an unknown computer program. Companies Circle, which is behind USDC, and Tether, the issuer of USDT, also participated in freezing funds related to the attack. Le Figaro ↗
Binance, in its statement published shortly after the incident was detected, stated that the funds of its more than 300 million users are completely safe. The company also admitted that it does not yet know the exact extent of the damage, and did not confirm whether other cryptocurrencies had actually been stolen as well. After the first reports and unconfirmed information about the attack appeared, the price of bitcoin also briefly dropped. The Guardian ↗
Binance, in cooperation with security experts, is currently investigating the scope and origin of the attack. Final figures on the extent of the damage and the identity of the attackers should be known after the completion of a forensic analysis of the transactions, which may clarify whether this is indeed the largest cryptocurrency heist in history, as is currently being speculated. Der Standard ↗
Binance froze billions of dollars in cryptocurrencies after hacker attack
This summary was generated by artificial intelligence. It may contain inaccuracies. Please verify information in the original sources below.
Sources (5)
Binance meldet massiven Hackerangriff: 2,5 Milliarden Dollar eingefroren
Der Standard
| 06:48 30.10.
2,5 Mrd. Dollar eingefroren: Hackerangriff bei Binance
ORF
| 06:22 30.10.
Binance freezes $3 billion in assets after suspected hack
RTE News
| 04:24 30.10.
Crypto giant Binance freezes $2.5bn of assets over suspected hack
BBC News
| 01:46 30.10.
Cryptomonnaies : une cyberattaque massive pousse Binance à geler 2,5 milliards de dollars
France24
| 04:15 30.10.
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