Binance hack: Over $6 billion of crypto stolen – what happened?

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has been hacked. During the cyberattack, hackers stole $6.3 billion in cryptocurrencies. This is the biggest heist in the history of cryptocurrencies, just ahead of the Bybit hack. All eyes are on North Korean hackers, specialists in digital asset theft.

On the evening of Thursday, October 29, hackers siphoned wallets from Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, on the blockchain. Binance estimates the damage at $6.3 billion, or nearly 5.5 billion euros. This is four times more than the previous record hack, namely the theft of $1.5 billion from Bybit in February 2025.

According to investigations by the analysis company TRM Labs, the hackers took action around 9 p.m. Paris time. Cybercriminals emptied Binance wallets connected to the Internet. In around twenty minutes, all funds were transferred to crypto addresses controlled by the hackers. Initially, Binance was cautious by indicating that it was “aware of reports concerning a potential security problem”. The exchange then undertook to carry out an investigation. Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the platform, quickly talks about the possibility of a “cyberattack against Binance”.

Binance’s initial investigation suggests that 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. We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak. We will share a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is complete and the facts are fully verified.

The estimated total impact sits at around $6.3B. We have worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with ~$3 billion frozen on-chain so far. Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and the company’s funds. User funds are safe. We will also publish an updated Proof of Reserves once the remediation is complete.

– temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while security checks are completed; – revoked the affected address authorization; – engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds.

Our teams are working around the clock to resolve this issue safely and thoroughly. We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice.

Please rely only on official Binance channels for updates. Please feel free to contact Binance Customer Support if you have any further questions.

Faced with the cyberattack hitting Binance, the entire crypto ecosystem quickly mobilized. Tether, the issuer of the USDT, manages to block around 1.56 billion dollars stolen by the crooks. Circle, the issuer of USDC, freezes more than 800 million. The objective is to prevent hackers from exfiltrating funds onto mixers, tools that will mix cryptos so that Binance loses track of them.

Machine-translated from French