One of the most secured & leading cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has just been compromised reporting over 7,000 Bitcoin worth $40.5 million stolen by the hackers.
Binance is a highly trusted cryptocurrency exchange and there have been several hacking attempts earlier but none succeeded until this one. According to Binance, this time the hackers were somehow able to obtain a large number of user API keys, 2FA codes, and potentially other info. The sources of attacks were many, and Binance believes it included phishing & viruses.
As of now, there is only one affected transaction that affected Binance’s BTC hot wallet which only contained about 2% of their total BTC holdings. According to Binance, all of their other wallets are secure and unharmed.
Link to the affected transaction: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/e8b406091959700dbffcff30a60b190133721e5c39e89bb5fe23c5a554ab05ea
The hackers had the patience to wait, and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time. The transaction is structured in a way that passed our existing security checks. It was unfortunate that we were not able to block this withdrawal before it was executed. Once executed, the withdrawal triggered various alarms in our system. We stopped all withdrawals immediately after that.
The exchange has been very open and transparent about the hack, and the CEO & Founder CZ also did a scheduled AMA after the hack. He talked about the hack and future plans in his Livestream:
In his Livestream he mentioned that they will recover the lost funds through the SAFU Fund. CZ and the exchange also mentioned this on their recent tweets and on the announcement channel respectively.
The mainstream crypto community as well as the big names in the industry like Coinbase and other exchanges are also extending their support by pledging to block those addresses for deposits.
Justin Sun, CEO of Tron Foundation & BitTorrent pledged to deposit 40 Million USDT into Binance to extend support.
But the gentle CZ politely refused all the incoming offers for financial support and told the SAFU Fund is enough to help them cover the loss.
All of this clearly portrays that the funds are #safu and the entire crypto community is united. But it is strongly recommended that you use centralized cryptocurrency exchanges only for Trading & participating in IEOs. For hodling, always keep your assets on those wallets where you have access to your private key.
The users of Binance have to wait up to one week until the deposits & withdraws are open as the exchange is making sure to be more secure until they restart these operations. However, you can still trade on the exchange without any interruptions.
