Binance suspends withdrawals after $6.3B theft via compromised DevOps engineer laptop

Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals after an attacker submitted unauthorized withdrawal transactions worth about $6.3 billion.

Binance says its initial investigation suggests a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop gave the attacker access to a service container. TechCrunch reports that North Korean hackers are responsible, and that the theft is the largest crypto heist on record; Binance's statements as relayed by Rohan Paul do not name a perpetrator.

Binance says it has found no evidence of a wallet private key leak. It says it worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with about $3 billion frozen on-chain so far. Binance says it will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and company funds.