Bitcoin Magazine

Fed and OCC Quiz U.S. Banks After $6.3 Billion Binance Hack

U.S. bank regulators contacted banks this week to check whether their systems had any vulnerabilities after last week’s $6.3 billion hack of Binance, Reuters reported Thursday, citing several people familiar with the matter.

Supervisors from the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency began reaching out to banks on Monday morning, asking about any unusual activity or disruption in their services.

The outreach shows regulators are treating the largest crypto theft on record as a possible risk to traditional finance, not just a problem for crypto exchanges, at a time when links between banks and the crypto industry have tightened.

One source at a bank that regulators contacted told Reuters there had been no disruptions to its services. Employees there prepared talking points for customers but have since received few inquiries.

Banks have been studying the attack and running diagnostics on their own systems to make sure they could defend against something similar, two people familiar with the efforts said.

Within hours of the hack, a cybersecurity team at one of the largest U.S. banks reached out to counterparts at Binance. That team is writing an internal report that will lead to a review of the bank’s systems and possibly cybersecurity updates. It was not yet clear whether the bank would be vulnerable to the same tactics.

The biggest concern, one person said, is that artificial intelligence models have been evolving quickly, making it hard for banks to keep up with hackers.

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