“The largest bank heist in human history.” That’s what Thursday’s $6.3 billion crypto hack of Binance is being called by insiders.
Roughly $3 billion of the $6.3 billion in assets “had potentially been located and frozen across several exchanges, though it was not immediately clear if those funds were recoverable,” according to NBC News.
Binance said customer withdrawals should resume by Sunday, but deposits “remain unaffected and continue to operate as normal.”
Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said Friday that based on their investigation so far they suspect more than one hacker was involved in what he characterized as “a complex attack.”
“The attacker also used a self-destruct mechanism … making it more difficult for us to trace and investigate,” said Teng.
Teng said that customer assets “are safe.” NBC said that Binance’s corporate holdings were the ones affected by the hack.
The North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor are reportedly suspected to be behind the attack on the cryptocurrency exchange, according to The New York Post.
“Cybercriminals swiped the digital coins out of Binance wallets within a mere 20 minutes starting at 4:30 p.m. ET Thursday, exploiting the system by hacking into an engineer’s laptop, according to analytics firm TRM Labs and industry insiders,” the Post reports.
The US Secret Service is helping in tracking the stolen crypto funds.
The hack rattled cryptocurrency markets and related stocks, with the likes of Bitcoin and Ether both enduring drops Friday.
Photo credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.
