The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance has been hacked by a group that stole $6.3 billion in the largest heist of digital currency in history.
The attack took place on Thursday and involved multiple points of entry, according to the company’s most recent statement. Binance has temporarily paused withdrawals from its platform to prevent further theft and said that all losses will be covered.
The company added that it is working with law enforcement to gather more information and will provide an update when possible. Binance’s initial investigation suggested that a compromised laptop belonging to one of its DevOps engineers was responsible, but that it now appears this was just one of several points of breach, it said.
Around $3 billion of the funds have been frozen by their issuers, which include Tether, Circle and the Trump-backed World Liberty Financial.
The source of the attack is not yet known, but crypto researchers have suggested that a state-backed North Korean group may be responsible. AI and blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs has attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, North Korea’s elite hacking unit, adding that it has “high confidence” in this judgement.
The hacking group was also behind the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025, and TRM Labs said that “several features” of this attack match previous hacks by the group.
The attack itself involved taking control of a so-called hot wallet, a wallet connected to the internet that an exchange uses to process customer withdrawals. By injecting malicious code into the wallet’s smart contract, which decides its behaviour, the threat group was able to funnel funds from multiple accounts directly to its own.
TRM estimates that by racing against the freezes, the hackers were able to move around $2.4 billion outside of the reach of issuers through selling Tether’s stablecoin (USDT) to market makers and borrowing Ethereum against USDT.
This is the latest, and largest, in a string of cyber attacks against cryptocurrency platforms, which offer a high degree of anonymity compared to traditional finance.
Coinbase, the US’s largest crypto exchange, had user data stolen in March 2025, causing damage estimated between $180 million and $400 million to the company, one of a string of attacks in the industry that totalled around $2.9 billion last year according to TRM Labs.
In September, hackers stole roughly $350 million of crypto from exchange Bitget.
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