More than $40 million in bitcoin stolen from the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has confirmed a “large scale” data breach, in which hackers stole more than $40 million in cryptocurrency. In a statement, the company said hackers stole API keys, two-factor codes and other information in the attack.
Binance traced the cryptocurrency theft — more than 7,000 bitcoins at the time of writing — to a single wallet after the hackers stole the contents of the company’s bitcoin hot wallet. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, said the theft impacted about 2% of its total bitcoin holdings.
The hackers were able to withdraw 7000 BTC in one transaction „that impacted our BTC hot wallet only(which contained about 2% of our total BTC holdings). All of our other wallets are secure and unharmed.”, said the statement.
“The hackers had the patience to wait, and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time,” the statement read. “The transaction is structured in a way that passed our existing security checks. It was unfortunate that we were not able to block this withdrawal before it was executed.”
“Once executed, the withdrawal triggered various alarms in our system. We stopped all withdrawals immediately after that,” the statement said.
Binance said its secure asset fund for users (SAFU) will cover user losses.
Until the company’s investigation is complete, deposits and withdrawals will remain suspended but trading will remain open.
Anders Olofsson – former Head of Payments Finastra
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
