The Binance hack gave the crypto industry one of those moments where memes, money, and uncomfortable questions all arrive at once.
Nikita Bier, X’s former product manager, didn’t hold back either. Directly attacking CZ, he wrote:
“The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange just suffered the biggest theft in human history – and the person running it is a nomadic autistic man from Dubai who posts “Funds are SAFU!” What a time to be alive.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk declared that “Every day is Zeroday.”
Inside the Binance hack
On October 29, Binance suffered a major security incident with an estimated impact of around $6.3 billion, according to the crypto exchange’s own update. On-chain investigations have traced billions of unauthorized outflows across multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tron, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Avalanche. The important detail is that Binance’s preliminary investigation points to a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which could have allowed the attacker to access a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions.
Binance says it has found no evidence of a wallet private key leak. Blockchain investigators also identified the use of EIP-7702 permissions, with 50 signed permissions submitted in an attempt to match the wallet name change. One of them successfully matched, allowing malicious code to execute on the affected wallet. The investigation is still ongoing, so the full path of the attack has not yet been officially established.
Tether froze over $1.567 billion in USDT, while Circle froze over $800 million in USDC in coordination with law enforcement. The Arbitrum Security Council also intervened to freeze assets, alongside other token issuers. The frozen total announced by Binance approached $3 billion, although the exact figure has changed as recovery efforts have progressed. This still leaves a significant amount to be traced and recovered.
CZ, who no longer runs Binance but remains a major shareholder, said the incident did indeed look like a hack and expressed confidence that users would be fully covered. Co-CEO Yi He also confirmed that the crypto exchange would absorb losses through its SAFU fund and company resources. Deposits and withdrawals were temporarily suspended while security checks were carried out, and trading on Binance Alpha was also suspended.
But the shock has spread far beyond Binance. Bitcoin briefly fell to near $76,300, wiping out nearly $478.9 million in positions, 84.6% of which were long. Ethereum wasn’t far behind, seeing $363.5 million in liquidations, with long traders accounting for 83.5%, according to estimates from Crypto Patel. Solana followed with $82.1 million, while XRP saw $38.1 million wiped out. HYPE was an interesting exception, with $31.3 million in liquidations and short positions taking the hardest hit.
DeFi also felt the shockwave. Aave, for example, frozen 175 markets across 16 networks on V3, plus another 117 markets on V4, as a precaution. Kamino also suspended SOL and BTC borrowing to limit potential exposure.
The same hacker behind both exploits?
ZachXBT has find a link between Binance and Bitget exploits. He said the funds stolen in both incidents ended up in the same wallet address after passing through THORChain. The popular blockchain investigator believes this indicates that the same attacker is behind both hacks.
The Bitget exploit was previously linked to the North Korea-associated TraderTraitor group, which has also been linked to other incidents, including the Kelp DAO exploit. MistTrack also discovered that the TRX stolen in the Binance hack was transferred via Bitget Wallet Swap Bridge to an address starting with 0xCd68. This wallet had already been used by the Phemex hacker.
The post Binance Hit by $6.3 Billion Security Nightmare: Nikita Bier Mocks CZ, While ZachXBT Spots Bigger Threat appeared first on CryptoPotato.
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