Hackers breached Binance and stole $6.3 billion
The attack may have been carried out by a group from North Korea that previously hacked another cryptocurrency exchange
The cryptocurrency exchange Binance faced a record theft of assets worth $6.3 billion during the night of October 29 to 30. The company stated that user deposits were not affected, and all losses will be fully compensated using its own funds and the SAFU fund. Binance, together with blockchain partners, has already managed to freeze nearly half of the stolen amount—approximately $3 billion.
According to the exchange, unidentified hackers penetrated the system and initiated a mass withdrawal of assets from hot wallets, although no evidence of user private key leaks was found. Analysts at TRM Labs believe the main phase of fund withdrawals occurred between 1:05 and 1:25 Tashkent time (20:05–20:25 GMT) using wallets across 10 different blockchains. Preparation for the attack took at least 36 hours.
The company clarified that the attack was made possible due to a compromised laptop of one of its DevOps engineers, through which the attackers gained access to the hot wallet signing infrastructure.
Withdrawals are currently temporarily suspended, but the platform expects to resume them within 48 hours after upgrading its security perimeter. Deposits and trading functions continue to operate as usual. Binance specialists are tracking the full attack path and preparing a detailed incident report.
Experts linked the hack to the North Korean group TraderTraitor (previously, the FBI held them responsible for the $1.5 billion hack of the Bybit exchange in February 2025). Former U.S. federal prosecutor Ari Redbord noted that recovering stolen stablecoins (USDC and USDT) will be easiest due to the issuers' ability to freeze them, while retrieving BTC and ETH will require lengthy legal proceedings with intermediary platforms.
The news of the hack triggered a decline in key digital assets. Bitcoin (BTC) dropped to $76,400 over 24 hours (its lowest since September) before correcting to $78,430 (-2.3%). Ethereum (ETH) fell below $2,200 for the first time since August, settling at $2,244 (-3.4%). Binance's native token, BNB, lost 5% of its value, dropping to $717.
