Hackers breach Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, has lost $6.3 billion in a hack after an attacker gained access to its system through an engineer’s laptop. The exchange has already frozen about $3 billion and pledged to cover the remaining losses from its own fund.

According to Binance’s preliminary findings, the attacker gained access to an internal service container after compromising a DevOps engineer’s laptop. This allowed them to send transactions and withdraw funds without authorization. The exchange has found no evidence that the private keys to its wallets were leaked.

While the investigation is underway, Binance has suspended deposits and withdrawals, revoked permissions for the affected address and brought in law enforcement. Blockchain specialists are now tracing the transfers and working to recover the assets.

The company has pledged to cover all losses from SAFU (Secure Asset Fund for Users), a fund created to protect users’ money. Following news of the hack, Bitcoin fell overnight from $80,000–82,000 to $76,400. The panic also affected other cryptocurrencies.