Binance has uncovered a wider breach than first thought in the $6.3 billion exploit that froze the world’s largest crypto exchange — and it is targeting a Sunday withdrawal restart as investigators keep tracing the record-breaking heist.
Binance (Credits: CoinDesk)
The exchange initially pointed to a single compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop that let attackers reach a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawals. But in an update on October 30, Binance said investigators had “uncovered additional points of breach,” calling the incident a complex attack. Co-CEO Richard Teng confirmed the attacker did not simply use one engineer’s permissions — and the company says it has found no evidence that any wallet private key leaked.
Binance $6.3 Billion Hack: Latest Developments
Binance has set aside more than $6.34 billion in corporate funds to cover all losses, with $5 billion already held in the same tokens stolen — USDC, USDT, BTC, ETH and BNB — and the rest being acquired through market and over-the-counter purchases. About $3 billion of assets have been frozen on blockchain networks, including over $1.5 billion frozen by Tether and $800 million by Circle.
Blockchain intelligence firms TRM Labs, Chainalysis and Elliptic have attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, North Korea’s elite hacking unit. The attackers appear to have exploited an EIP-7702 smart-contract delegation to gain execution authority over an operational hot wallet, draining funds across 10 blockchains in roughly 20 minutes — about four times the previous record set by the Bybit hack.
Withdrawal Restart Target: Sunday
Withdrawals have been suspended since about 22:15 UTC on October 29 while the exchange reconfigures signing controls and reviews endpoints, cloud hosting and key management. Binance said it remains on track to resume withdrawals in roughly 45 hours — early Sunday — and plans to publish an updated proof-of-reserves report by Monday. Co-founder Yi He announced the timetable on X, while Teng reiterated in a video address that user funds are safe.
Also Read: Binance Arranges $6.34 Billion to Cover Losses From Record $6.3B Crypto Hack Blamed on North Korea | How One Ethereum Upgrade Feature Helped Drain $2.5 Billion From Binance’s Wallet
Source: CoinDesk — read the full story there.
