Binance resumes withdrawals after $6.3B hack, sees outflows

Binance resumed withdrawals on Sunday, about 48 hours after suspending them following a hack that took around $6.3 billion in crypto from its hot wallets. Customers had withdrawn a net $4.72 billion by Monday, Reuters reported.

What did Binance suspend after the breach?

Binance temporarily suspended withdrawals while it reviewed security and affected systems, but said deposits and other unaffected services remained operational. The exchange’s security incident update said the breach began around 20:05 UTC on Oct. 29, when compromised hot wallets lost about $6.3 billion in token assets.

Binance said it found no evidence that wallet private keys had been leaked. Its investigation had uncovered multiple points of breach, but the company had not yet established the full attack sequence.

How much of the stolen crypto has Binance covered?

Binance said it would cover the loss through its Secure Asset Fund for Users and corporate treasury. By Oct. 30, it said it had set aside more than $6.34 billion, including $5 billion in the affected tokens, and that about $3 billion of assets had been frozen on-chain.

Reuters reported on Monday that Binance said it had also received $2.7 billion in customer inflows since withdrawals resumed. The net outflows amounted to about 3% of the assets held on the platform, according to the exchange.

Who does the FBI blame for the attack?

The FBI said North Korea-linked group TraderTraitor was responsible, Reuters reported. Binance said it was working with law enforcement, blockchain intelligence firms, token issuers and other exchanges to trace and recover assets.

Binance’s withdrawals resumed in phases, and some cryptocurrencies remained unavailable for withdrawal on Monday. The company said it would continue recovery efforts and publish a technical post-mortem after its security review.

Source material

• reported — live.euronext.com
• security incident update — binance.com