Binance Replenishes 90% of Stolen $6.3B, Pledges They'll Cover It All, Reopen Sunday (nbcnews.com) 53
"We've now replenished 90% of the stolen assets, and we're committed to covering the remaining 10%," Binance co-CEO Richard Teng posted on X, adding that "Our users will not bear the financial impact of this incident."
"Binance said it was able to replace the funds taken in the record hack by using company money to buy new tokens," reports NBC News: The remaining 10% consists of tokens that are less liquid, meaning they may take longer to buy, it said in a statement posted on X... Binance said it has set aside around $6.34 billion of company funds internally to cover the losses. The money spent re-buying tokens came from using part of its $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users, a bitcoin reserve it holds to protect customers in the event of security breaches, as well as some of its Futures Insurance Fund, and the company's own corporate treasury, it said on X.
NBC News reports that the FBI blames the breach on a North Korea-sponsored group known as TraderTraitor: Members of [TraderTraitor] were observed by law enforcement converting stolen assets into the cryptocurrency ethereum, the FBI said in a statement, adding that it expects "further laundering" of the assets through the use of related technology... After the hack, the exchange stopped allowing customers to withdraw their funds, but it said Saturday it was still on track to reopen withdrawals Sunday.
CNBC reports: The world's largest crypto exchange initially said the hack may involve "a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions." However, Co-CEO Richard Teng later said the attack involved a more complex process rather than the misuse of a single engineer's permissions.
The New York Times describes what happened when Binance first spotted "a multibillion-dollar deluge of digital coins" pouring out of its accounts: As the news spread, Binance's top executives put together an informal war room on Wea, the company's internal messaging system, with about 100 participants, including specialized cryptocurrency tracers and security personnel. They eventually transitioned to a mass conference call, with 100 boxes on the screen, where employees took turns muting and then unmuting, communicating in a mixture of English and Chinese. Among them was He Yi, Binance's co-chief executive, who is seven months pregnant, and worked through the night from her base in Abu Dhabi, taking a call at 3 a.m. local time....
Much of the drama played out in public. Almost all crypto transactions are recorded on the blockchain, a ledger of money movements that anyone can look up. That meant crypto analysts could see funds leaving Binance in real time... North Koreans have targeted crypto companies for years, using the proceeds of those thefts to fund its nuclear program, according to Western officials. The hackers have developed increasingly complex strategies to steal crypto and launder the proceeds, a painstaking endeavor that can take months to complete. In a blog post on Friday, Chainalysis said the attackers had deployed "laundering patterns we have not seen before," conducting thousands of transactions over a short period, probably with the help of automation.
At the same time, Binance's colleagues in the industry mobilized to intercept some of the laundered crypto. Certain digital coin issuers can freeze funds, allowing them to halt a money-laundering operation in its tracks. Soon after the hack, Tether and Circle, two major issuers, announced that they had frozen stashes of their own coins that the hackers had seized from Binance, a combined total of more than $2 billion in crypto. Binance is now working to gain access to those funds, the company said. But $2.4 billion in crypto is already "beyond any issuer's reach," according to [blockchain intelligence firmm] TRM.
The article also includes President Trump's reaction when asked Friday about the breach. "I've always felt it was a little bit dangerous. But they say they have it pretty much under control. We'll see."
"Binance said it was able to replace the funds taken in the record hack by using company money to buy new tokens," reports NBC News: The remaining 10% consists of tokens that are less liquid, meaning they may take longer to buy, it said in a statement posted on X... Binance said it has set aside around $6.34 billion of company funds internally to cover the losses. The money spent re-buying tokens came from using part of its $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users, a bitcoin reserve it holds to protect customers in the event of security breaches, as well as some of its Futures Insurance Fund, and the company's own corporate treasury, it said on X.
NBC News reports that the FBI blames the breach on a North Korea-sponsored group known as TraderTraitor: Members of [TraderTraitor] were observed by law enforcement converting stolen assets into the cryptocurrency ethereum, the FBI said in a statement, adding that it expects "further laundering" of the assets through the use of related technology... After the hack, the exchange stopped allowing customers to withdraw their funds, but it said Saturday it was still on track to reopen withdrawals Sunday.
CNBC reports: The world's largest crypto exchange initially said the hack may involve "a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions." However, Co-CEO Richard Teng later said the attack involved a more complex process rather than the misuse of a single engineer's permissions.
The New York Times describes what happened when Binance first spotted "a multibillion-dollar deluge of digital coins" pouring out of its accounts: As the news spread, Binance's top executives put together an informal war room on Wea, the company's internal messaging system, with about 100 participants, including specialized cryptocurrency tracers and security personnel. They eventually transitioned to a mass conference call, with 100 boxes on the screen, where employees took turns muting and then unmuting, communicating in a mixture of English and Chinese. Among them was He Yi, Binance's co-chief executive, who is seven months pregnant, and worked through the night from her base in Abu Dhabi, taking a call at 3 a.m. local time....
Much of the drama played out in public. Almost all crypto transactions are recorded on the blockchain, a ledger of money movements that anyone can look up. That meant crypto analysts could see funds leaving Binance in real time... North Koreans have targeted crypto companies for years, using the proceeds of those thefts to fund its nuclear program, according to Western officials. The hackers have developed increasingly complex strategies to steal crypto and launder the proceeds, a painstaking endeavor that can take months to complete. In a blog post on Friday, Chainalysis said the attackers had deployed "laundering patterns we have not seen before," conducting thousands of transactions over a short period, probably with the help of automation.
At the same time, Binance's colleagues in the industry mobilized to intercept some of the laundered crypto. Certain digital coin issuers can freeze funds, allowing them to halt a money-laundering operation in its tracks. Soon after the hack, Tether and Circle, two major issuers, announced that they had frozen stashes of their own coins that the hackers had seized from Binance, a combined total of more than $2 billion in crypto. Binance is now working to gain access to those funds, the company said. But $2.4 billion in crypto is already "beyond any issuer's reach," according to [blockchain intelligence firmm] TRM.
The article also includes President Trump's reaction when asked Friday about the breach. "I've always felt it was a little bit dangerous. But they say they have it pretty much under control. We'll see."
Nork, Nork (Score:2, Funny)
Who's there?
Stole your money!
Re:Nork, Nork (Score:5, Interesting)
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1. Claim to have lost 6.3B. Replenish 90%
2. Repay the remaining 10% as promised.
3. ????
4. Proft!
I love conspiracies!
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Replenish is a funny verb (Score:2)
If Binance was a legitimate company then it is possible they might have other assets to use in "replenishing" the assets stolen from their customers, but I don't believe that is the case here. First of all, I don't think Binance would have said anything at all if the theft hadn't happened, and second of all the ability to make anonymous and untraceable transactions is supposed to be a feature, not a bug.
So my theory is that they are replenishing the stolen crypto with other crypto. The only trick is how to
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Basically the ACK, but I think I mostly disagree because banks are regulated from outside. In theory, if the regulators have not been captured, they should be establishing safe limits linked to reality. I have yet to detect any safety or reality in crypto.
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They wouldn't have been able to recover 90% if it was a North Korean job.
What kind of profit do they make? (Score:2)
This whole thing sound very, very wrong. Like they stole this themselves and that is the reason they even have the money.
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What motivation could they have for intentionally making themselves look incompetent?
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Greed. It has happened in the crapto space time and again. It also has been happening in regular banking, until they got regulated very strictly.
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They are a big crypto middle man. They have been taking a piece of transactions as profit. Not so different that a stock exchange charges fees.
Will they be able to cover the next one? (Score:3)
This isn't the first time. In October 2022, hackers got away with a mere $500 million. This time, $6 billion. The hackers are getting better at this.
If you've got your money tied up in crypto, this is a good time to get out.
Re: Will they be able to cover the next one? (Score:1)
Hacks don't devalue cryptocurrency anymore than bank heists devalue the dollar.
Re: Will they be able to cover the next one? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, and the drop in the price of bitcoin on the day the hack was announced is a coincidence!
Money in a bank is safe, even if the bank is hacked. The traceability of money makes it difficult to steal from a bank but with Bitcoin, it is impossible to reverse any theft. There is a reason bitcoin theft is loved by hackers.
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Money in a bank is safe, even if the bank is hacked. The traceability of money makes it difficult to steal from a bank but with Bitcoin, it is impossible to reverse any theft. There is a reason bitcoin theft is loved by hackers.
It's mostly "safe" in the bank because the bank spent it! Bank transfers are often irreversible, but a hacker couldn't transfer that much before the bank's ledgers reach 0. If too many account holders try to withdraw money the bank simply shuts down...
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Money in a bank is safe, even if the bank is hacked. The traceability of money makes it difficult to steal from a bank but with Bitcoin, it is impossible to reverse any theft. There is a reason bitcoin theft is loved by hackers.
It's mostly "safe" in the bank because the bank spent it!
The bank usually invests it, rather than spending it. BTW, loans are investments.
Bank transfers are often irreversible, but a hacker couldn't transfer that much before the bank's ledgers reach 0. If too many account holders try to withdraw money the bank simply shuts down...
Then the FDIC steps in and makes everyone whole up to $250K of their deposits with any specific bank. That's why if you have more real $$$, you should invest in Treasuries. You'll almost always get a better return than any Bank CD also and pay lower taxes on the gains. And if the US ever defaults on their debt, we are all f*d anyway.
Cryptocurrency has no real value, and so as long as victims accept crypto rather than real money
Re: Will they be able to cover the next one? (Score:5, Informative)
Dollars have aircraft carriers, nukes and a whole bunch of international politicians with military power to support and back it up.
Anything crypto has a bunch of filthy greedy cryptobros and a lot of hot air talk about community and even more of dude-trust-me-bro...
Weird how you people think these two are the same or crypto is allegedly better, more private and more stable.
Re: Will they be able to cover the next one? (Score:1)
Cryptocurrency has a force more powerful than any military hardware or economic warfare the U.S. can bring to bear: math.
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Cryptocurrency has a force more powerful than any military hardware or economic warfare the U.S. can bring to bear: math.
Math? Really?
The generation and manipulation of numbers is valuable only for how they are applied. Math is a tool.
With Cryptocurrency, Math (that many do not understand) along with cognitive manipulation is used to convince victims to hand their currency to the robber. This works better than a weapon, because the victim only finds out later long after they cannot get their real currency back.
Saying "math" is like saying "trust the code" to people who do not understand either.
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Science is a process, not a result.
Re: Will they be able to cover the next one? (Score:2)
Then it also has an equally powerful force AGAINST it: math.
Because those crypto ciphers will not stand forever.
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As with everything, the value of cryptocurrency is determined by the balance of supply and demand. If a major heist causes some people to be reluctant to invest in crypto, the demand side of the equation goes down, bringing the price down.
This was not equivalent to a bank heist. This was more like robbers getting away with stealing the entire contents of the vaults at Ft. Knox. Such a major heist would indeed shake people's confidence in the dollar, and would cause it to be devauled.
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Hacks don't devalue cryptocurrency anymore than bank heists devalue the dollar.
Unless a significant number of the victim investors in the Crypto decide to cash out to real money. Then they'll find out they can't and there is NO BACKSTOP or insurance like the FDIC to make them whole ever again.
Too bad, so sad. You lost your real $$$ when to bought the tokens. But your exchange was probably paid fees in your real $$$. In exchange, you get to see fake valuation numbers on a screen until you try to cash out.
Thus the "pantomime play" about all the tokens frozen and recovered.
Want to test t
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There are people that want to treat crypto contracts as law. Its nuts.
It is kind of interesting that most of the blockchains themselves are cryptographically secure, for now. But the storage and exchange of keys to blocks seems not so secure again and again. Binance is a big player, who is getting this right?
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But the storage and exchange of keys to blocks seems not so secure again and again.
This is the way it is with all security. It's always a tradeoff between keeping unauthorized people out, and allowing authorized people in.
Your house has a key to the front door, but it's relatively trivial for a robber to kick the door in. So do you replace your front door with a heavy bank vault, with multiple locking mechanisms? You won't do this, because then *you* would have a hard time getting in and out. Instead, you make friends with your neighbors so you can look out for each other, you get insuran
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Why don't we see an Engineer's laptop at some major US Bank being compromised and then the bank getting drained of funds? Why is it that the traditional system does not seem to have these same kind of draining attacks?
Because crypto is still growing up and discovering why financial systems have certain features.
* AI response*
If hackers compromise a high-level U.S. bank employee's laptop, they do not gain immediate, unfettered access to a multi-billion dollar digital hot wallet. Bank assets are separated int
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It's true that bank security systems are much more robust and mature. However, major electronic bank heists do happen, even in the US.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/c... [cbsnews.com]
https://www.kaspersky.com/abou... [kaspersky.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Something is fishy (Score:2)
If they can prevent changes to the current political climate they can kee
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I'm no fan of crypto or Binance, but there is zero evidence that they are "in on it." That is pure speculation on your part.
NIce (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: NIce (Score:3)
Seriously, did you even bother to read TFS? Of course not...
"Binance said it was able to replace the funds taken in the record hack by using company money to buy new tokens," reports NBC News:
The remaining 10% consists of tokens that are less liquid, meaning they may take longer to buy, it said in a statement posted on X... Binance said it has set aside around $6.34 billion of company funds internally to cover the losses. The money spent re-buying tokens came from using part of its $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users, a bitcoin reserve it holds to protect customers in the event of security breaches, as well as some of its Futures Insurance Fund, and the company's own corporate treasury, it said on X.
Re: NIce (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: NIce (Score:2)
The $3M/day they collect in fees (estimate based on volume and base transaction fees) as well as any additional profits they scrape out by sitting at the nexus of the largest cryptocurrency transactions. While they don't officially operate as a market maker, it's generally assumed there is some level of front running or other behavior going on.
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Most of it was recovered by freezing stablecoin assets and stuff, a fraction will be covered by their own capital. That's the serious answer you didn't earn.
Deanonimizer (Score:1)
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I don't condone violence. Just stop giving them money and they can shrivel up and die on their own.
Re: Bullets for crypto bros (Score:2)
Why the anger against crypto bros? The damage on the crypto market is limited to those that participate in the crypto industry - anyone outside the crypto market is safe. Being out of the crypto market means not involved either directly or indirectly.
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limited to those that participate in the crypto industry
If you have your retirement in any of: Fidelity, JPMorgan Chase, Franklin Templeton, Goldman Sachs or BlackRock. Then you probably have had a financial advisor try to push this crypto stuff on you. And even if you say no, they have other instruments that bundle an index that includes crypto.
Maybe there was a time when most of the crypto crime was just committed against people who were all-in on the nonsense. Unfortunately that time is about 10 years behind us. Now we have to watch out that our working class
Laws against homicide have many exceptions (Score:2)
Violence including war is an accepted therefore acceptable method of resolving various human problems, including social parasites like the people who sold adulterated infant formula with fatal results in China. Their public liquidation sent a healthy message some people are refuse to get when asserted by lesser means.
If some life is precious it follows other lives are the opposite.
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it you steel nothing.... (Score:1)
crypto needs to be outlawed it serves no legitimate use
Re: it you steel nothing.... (Score:1)
Re: it you steel nothing.... (Score:2)
That's a dumb argument. I too think things that I don't like should go away. But I don't go around proclaiming specific things I don't like to people and expect them to listen.
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Actually it's not dumb at all. There's a mountain of things we've banned when they cause more harm than good. And crypto objectively serves universally illegitimate purposes.
Re: it you steel nothing.... (Score:1)
Almost everything causes more harm than good. Entertainment is not necessary. It's a distraction from a poorly run society.
Re: it you steel nothing.... (Score:2)
Good, cause I didn't hear that.
I think I have it (Score:1)
I'm Impressed (Score:2)
If I'm understanding it, Binance had a $2B reserve and that they might recover another $2B from other exchanges. But that's still $2B supposedly coming out of Binance pocket. Seems like a lot of reserves to me.
I'm impressed that Binance had that much for refunds.
The Trump quote is entirely unnecessary (Score:1)
Why include this? Even when the moron in chief has a lot to say, it's meaningless shit, and he clearly had nothing to say here.
Better quote: "Poot poot" said my ass, about the binance hack.
Be Aware: Learn about Crypto B4 Investing in it! (Score:2)
Let this movie Everyone is lying to you for money! [everyoneislying.com] (Click here for trailer [everyoneislying.com]) explain cryptocurrency to you. It costs $5.99 to watch in most jurisdictions or you can pay a lot more on Amazon Prime Video. The maker, who does have a degree in Economics, says he decided not to place it on regular streaming services because they all wanted 50% of revenue. I receive no compensation for suggesting it.
The filmmaker gained on camera interviews for the movie with various crypto-criminals before they got caught inc