A recap of Cointelegraph’s live coverage of the Binance hack, including early breach reports and the exchange’s full reimbursement pledge.
This article summarizes Cointelegraph’s coverage of the Binance hack as it unfolded. See the full timeline for detailed updates here.
Hackers stole about $6.3 billion from Binance on Thursday, in what is now the largest cryptocurrency theft on record. Industry partners have frozen roughly $3 billion in affected assets, while customers await the reopening of withdrawals.
TRM Labs traced the first unauthorized transfers to around 8:05 pm UTC Thursday, with Binance wallets drained across multiple blockchains. The attackers targeted hot wallets, which exchanges keep connected to the internet to process withdrawals.
TRM attributed the attack to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group, which the US Federal Bureau of Investigation blamed for the $1.5 billion Bybit theft in February 2025. Binance has not publicly confirmed the attackers’ identity.
“To be clear: the attacker did not simply use one engineer’s permissions, and this was not a single ‘one-click’ action,” said Binance co-CEO Richard Teng. “Our investigation has not attributed responsibility to any individual.”
Binance said it had reserved more than $6.34 billion in company funds to cover losses, including $5 billion already held in the affected tokens. However, that allocation excludes the frozen assets, and the exchange said it was buying the remaining tokens through exchanges and over-the-counter deals.
A spokesperson told Cointelegraph the $5 billion was in Binance’s custody but declined to disclose wallet addresses, citing security concerns. Security firm CertiK said it needed more information to verify the holdings independently.
Source link
