Binance says it has temporarily suspended withdrawals following a security breach, pledging to cover all losses from the incident through its secure asset fund for users (SAFU) and company funds, as its investigation puts the estimated financial impact at about $6.3 billion.
Richard Teng, co-chief executive officer (CEO) of Binance,
spoke on the measures in a post on X on Friday, adding that about $3 billion
has been frozen on-chain in coordination with the company’s blockchain
partners.
Teng said the exchange’s initial investigation suggested
that the incident may have originated from a compromised laptop belonging to a
DevOps engineer, which allegedly enabled an attacker to access a service
container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions.
He said the attack involved a complex process rather than a
single action or the simple exploitation of one employee’s permissions.
“Our initial investigation suggests this security incident
may have started with a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop. That gave an
attacker access to a service container, where they submitted unauthorised
withdrawal transactions,” Teng said.
“To be clear: the attacker did not simply use one engineer’s
permissions, and this was not a single ‘one-click’ action. It involved a more
complex attack process.”
The Binance co-CEO said the investigation has not attributed
responsibility to any individual, noting that the exchange has found no
evidence that any wallet private keys were leaked.
Teng assured customers that their funds are safe, saying
deposits remain unaffected and operating normally.
“Bottom line – your money is safe, and we’re covering every
loss,” he said.
He said Binance has temporarily suspended withdrawals while
it overhauls the security of its withdrawal service and related addresses.
The exchange said it had also revoked authorisations
associated with the affected addresses and engaged law enforcement agencies and
blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover the funds.
Teng said Binance would publish a detailed technical
post-mortem after completing its investigation and verifying the facts.
Binance’s SAFU fund is designed to provide an additional
layer of protection for users in emergencies.
Teng said the exchange would draw on the fund and company
resources to cover all losses arising from the incident.
BINANCE UNCOVERS ADDITIONAL POINTS OF BREACH
In a subsequent investigation update, Binance said it
uncovered additional points of breach, suggesting that the incident may have
involved more than the initially identified compromised laptop.
“This was a complex attack, and we are doing all we can in
coordination with law enforcement to resolve it. We are still gathering the
facts, and will share more directly as we have them,” the exchange said.
“The outflows ceased when we paused withdrawal service
earlier. We are still working with partners to freeze many of the impacted
assets, and have frozen around $3 billion thus far.”
Binance said it is working with law enforcement agencies to
establish the full circumstances of the attack, noting that withdrawals are
expected to resume within 45 hours, while deposits remain unaffected.
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