Binance said Friday that a security incident had an estimated impact of $6.3 billion. The exchange said about $3 billion in crypto assets had been frozen so far, and it pledged to cover all losses.
Binance said an initial investigation suggests "the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions." The company said deposits were unaffected and it expected to begin resuming withdrawals within 48 hours. It said it would cover losses using its Secure Asset Fund for Users and company funds. Binance temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals, revoked the affected address authorization, and enlisted law enforcement and blockchain intelligence firms to trace and recover funds.
Binance co-founder Yi He said the exchange had found no evidence of a wallet private key leak, according to the company. The company said it would publish a technical post-mortem and an updated Proof of Reserves after remediation.
Circle Internet Group, Tether and Ripple moved to freeze funds tied to the incident. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the company had frozen more than $800 million in USD Coin. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said his firm had frozen more than $1.5 billion of its stablecoin that may have been related to the breach. Yi He said Ripple helped halt the movement of $200 million in funds linked to the possible attack.
Crypto data provider Arkham Intelligence said it had linked nearly $6 billion in digital assets to 55 wallet addresses tied to the potential exploit. Arkham said it identifies and tracks wallets by analyzing publicly available blockchain data.
Bitcoin fell more than 4% to $77,994.96 on Friday, according to the report.