Binance reports $6.3bn security breach, pledges to cover losses

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has estimated the financial impact of a security incident at the company, which involved unauthorised withdrawal transactions at about $6.3 billion.

The cryptocurrency platform pledged to cover all losses through its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and company funds.

The company said preliminary investigations suggested that the incident may have involved a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, which allegedly enabled an attacker to access a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions.

In a series of X posts on Friday, Binance said it had found no evidence that any wallet’s private keys were leaked.

The exchange said it had worked with blockchain partners to freeze about $3 billion of the affected assets on-chain.

It added that it would publish a detailed technical post-mortem after completing its investigation and verifying the facts.

“Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and the company’s funds. User funds are safe,” the company said.

As part of its immediate response, Binance initially suspended deposits and withdrawals. It also conducted security checks, revoked the affected address authorisation and engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover the funds.

However, in a subsequent update, the company said deposits remained unaffected and were operating normally, while withdrawals remained suspended as its team worked on a security overhaul of the withdrawal service and related addresses.

Binance said it expected to resume withdrawals within 48 hours, promising to provide further updates.

The company said investigations were ongoing to establish the full attack path, noting that the compromised computer might have served as the entry point.

It also said it was working with law enforcement partners to establish the identities of those responsible and bring them to justice.

In a further precautionary measure, Binance temporarily suspended Binance Alpha trading, including CEX Buy Token, Alpha Instant and CEX purchase prediction marketing using funds in users’ spot wallets.

The company said trading would resume once the security issue had been resolved, maintaining that users’ funds remained safe.

Binance also expressed appreciation to industry partners who assisted in freezing the affected assets, describing the response as an industry-wide effort.

It said it would continue to publish verified information through its official communication channels and release an updated Proof of Reserves after completing the remediation process.

The Binance incident adds to a growing list of cybersecurity breaches threatening global technology companies, their operations and customer data. PwC, Stryker and Telus Digital are part of global enterprises that faced cyber security breaches recently.

On Monday, cybersecurity researchers reportedly accessed sensitive internal data and messaging systems at AI company Anthropic by exploiting vulnerabilities in business software.