The $6.3 billion Binance hack, the world’s biggest crypto theft ever, exposed operational weaknesses of the crypto exchanges and not blockchain flaws, say industry experts.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange put the total estimated impact at around $6.3 billion, four times the amount taken in the Bybit hack, the previous record. Around $3 billion of assets that passed through wallets linked to the hackers have been identified and frozen. The exchange has pledged to cover all losses.
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Binance said its initial investigation pointed to a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, which allowed an attacker to reach a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions. It later said that further investigation had uncovered additional points of breach, contrary to the first finding of a single compromised laptop. The exchange said it found no evidence that any wallet private key had leaked.
The UAE’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority, the Abu Dhabi Global Market’s regulator, said it is aware of the incident and monitoring the situation. Binance said it has set aside more than $6.34 billion of company funds to cover the incident.
Georgy Kucherin, senior security researcher at Kaspersky GReAT, said said the Binance attack and the separate incident at prediction platform Polymarket, linked to a compromised third-party DebugBear script, show exchanges can be breached through internal systems and external dependencies alike. Technical staff remain weak points, he added, as even experienced engineers can inadvertently download malware.
Sandeep Pyapali, founder and CEO of Mesta, said the attacker appears to have used the exchange’s own access routes. If the attacker gained privileges through an employee’s device, he said, the system may have read the withdrawals as legitimate.
He described the event as “a maturity test” for crypto rather than an extinction event, and said exchanges will now need tougher circuit-breakers, deeper insurance and larger reserve buffers.
Did AI hack Binance?
Carsten Menke, head of next generation research at Julius Baer, said the incident was “not a crypto issue, but a company issue”, adding that it underlines the custody risks of holding assets on centralised exchanges. He recommended self-custody in offline cold storage to reduce exposure.
Menke said there is no evidence that artificial intelligence (AI) played a role, but that AI is lowering the cost and speed of sophisticated attacks. He cited industry estimates that one in four malicious breaches is now AI-enabled, and reiterated Julius Baer’s constructive view on the cybersecurity theme.
Vincent Chok, CEO and founder of First Digital, said the past day showed how much depends on coordination, with exchanges, issuers and networks sharing information within hours.
Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch, said Tether and Circle froze more than $2.4 billion in stablecoins, and that other teams blocked addresses linked to the exploit. He said this has “significantly limited” where the attackers can move funds.
Source: Khaleej Times