Binance Repays 90% of $6.3bn Stolen in Record Hack — SkimNews
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- Binance has covered 90% of the $6.3bn (£4.7bn) assets stolen in Thursday's hack and set aside more than $6.34bn in company funds to honour its pledge to cover 100% of losses, saying it will absorb the financial impact of the stolen funds 'not our users'.
- Binance said all holdings of bitcoin, ethereum and Tether — plus seven other widely-traded crypto assets — are covered, and that it remains on track to resume withdrawals on Sunday 1 November, with a further update once details are confirmed.
- Binance said on Friday it had frozen around $3bn of the stolen assets after working with law enforcement, intelligence firms and partners, while the investigation remained ongoing.
- Richard Teng, Binance's co-chief executive, said more than one person carried out the hack using sophisticated methods to hide their tracks, including a 'self-destruct mechanism'; an initial finding that an engineer's laptop was compromised was later joined by 'additional points of breach'.
- Lazarus Group, also known as TraderTraitor, is the likely culprit according to two major blockchain analytics firms, which pointed to the North Korean state-backed group.
- FBI said North Korea was responsible for the $1.5bn theft from the Bybit exchange last year — a heist the Binance hack is believed to eclipse, making it the largest in crypto history — and North Korea has always denied involvement in these attacks.
- US Secret Service said it is working 'around the clock' with private sector partners to 'identify, freeze, trace, and recover funds' stolen from Binance.
Why it matters: Binance users avoid the $6.3bn loss because the exchange is drawing on more than $6.34bn of its own treasury, but the bill lands on the world's largest exchange while withdrawals stay shut until at least 1 November. Analysts' Lazarus Group attribution also puts the theft alongside the $1.5bn Bybit hack the FBI attributed to North Korea.
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