Binance co-CEO Richard Teng told exchange customers that the company will cover all losses after an estimated $6.3 billion security incident.
Additionally, Binance admitted that the compromised laptop initially blamed for the breach was not the only factor, as investigators found additional points of attack.
Binance works with law enforcement
In an X post, Teng said that initial investigations suggested an attacker may have gained access via a DevOps engineer’s compromised laptop, allowing them to access a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawals. However, he cautioned against reducing the incident to a single employee’s permissions or a single click.
“To be clear: the attacker did not simply use engineer permissions, and this is not a simple one-click action,” the executive explained. “This was a more complex attack process. Our investigation did not attribute responsibility to anyone.”
Regarding what the exchange has done since the hack, the co-CEO highlighted that it has temporarily stopped withdrawals and conducted a complete security overhaul of the entire withdrawal service and the addresses connected to it. Binance also revoked permissions from the affected addresses and invited law enforcement and on-chain intelligence firms to help trace and recover the money.
A subsequent Binance update changed the game again, with the exchange adage subsequent investigations revealed “additional points of violation,” although they did not specify exactly what they were.
Teng added that the company found no evidence of a private key leak and that about $3 billion of the $6.3 billion stolen was frozen on-chain with the help of “blockchain partners.” Furthermore, he reiterated that customer funds were safe and that Binance would cover any losses from its SAFU fund as well as additional company funds.
Public criticism increases
Many X users responded positively to Teng’s explanation, praising the crypto company’s “strong” leadership and transparency. Others were simply relieved to know their funds were safe.
However, some were less accommodating. One of them, NFT account Chill Pill, which has just under 100,000 followers, said it “would not trust Binance” at this point. Meanwhile, self-proclaimed crypto watchdog MASTR called the exchange is incompetent and has suggested that if it sells more assets to repay users, it could add pressure to the market as a whole.
Others, like former Product Manager
Indeed, the shock was felt across the market, with BTC briefly falling to $76,300 and wiping out nearly $479 million in positions, while ETH saw another $363 million in liquidations.
The post Here’s What Binance Did After a $6.3 Billion Hack appeared first on CryptoPotato.
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