Binance has earned a reputation as one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, and the man has just confirmed that a group of hackers has stolen 7,000 bitcoins from a wallet that contained at least 2% of the total holdings of the exchanges. The good news for investors of the exchange is that the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) will cover the losses in full. According to Zhao, the vicious attack was truly sophisticated in approach because the attackers used a lot of techniques to get access to the platform. No other wallets were affected in the incident.
The large scale security breach was discovered on May 7 of 2019 at 17:15:24-UTC. The team of hackers was able to obtain an abnormal number of API keys, 2FA codes, and a lot of information from any users. They proceeded to use very diverse techniques to get this information. Most of them the oldest tricks in the book: phishing, viruses, and malware attacks. The people at Binance are still conducting an internal investigation to get a hold of all the methods used. This also means that there might be additional accounts affected that have not been identified yet.
The hackers behind the theft were able to withdraw 7,000 bitcoins in a single transaction: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/e8b406091959700dbffcff30a60b190133721e5c39e89bb5fe23c5a554ab05ea
Binance – The Biggest Hit to an Exchange to This Date
The hack itself was discovered by the company on May 7, after the attackers obtained all the users API keys and the two-factor authentication codes they needed. The breach of data also offered additional information about the notification ads that the attackers used as leverage for their phishing schemes and planting malware, as well as all the techniques used to steal the funds in what is regarded so far as one of the most coordinated attacks on Internet goods.
It seems that the hackers really put their minds behind this. They bided their time, and they had a lot of patience to wait, and execute all the actions that led to the theft using multiple independent accounts with good timing. All the transactions were structured in such an organized manner that it passed all the existing security checks of the company. Zhao also added that it was regrettable that they were not able to block the withdrawal before it happened. Once it was done, the large amount of the sum triggered all the alarms in the system. Binance stopped all transactions after that.
Binance is currently conducting a full investigation of the incident and is reviewing all their security systems and placing new ones. The process will take at least a week during, with the company providing frequent updates since they will stop all deposits and withdrawals for the duration of it. Zhao expects to enable trading as soon as possible so users, can adjust their positions as they like. They are still keeping a close eye on the system since they think that hackers may still have control of certain users accounts and can use them to influence prices on the open market.
Binance is just another cryptocurrency exchange in a long list of operators that have suffered a security breach. So far, teams of hackers have managed to steal at least a hundred million dollars from other platforms such as Bitfinex, Bithumb, Coincheck, Coinrail, and Zaif.