The largest financial theft in history occurred in just 30 minutes, with hackers draining $6.3bn in bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies from five wallets controlled by Binance, the world's largest exchange. The attack began just after 8pm London time on Thursday, with the attacker repeating the trick several times over the next half-hour. Within hours, hackers controlled at least $3.33bn, according to Elliptic, a blockchain analytics company, making it the biggest robbery of all time.
Binance, the FBI and blockchain analysis companies are racing to trace the funds and prevent them from being cashed out. Richard Teng, co-chief executive of Binance, said the company was rebuilding and retesting its entire infrastructure system and conducting a full security review. Phil Larratt of Chainalysis described the attacker as state-sponsored and extremely sophisticated.
The day before the heist, the hacker began practising by sending small crypto payments through Tornado Cash, then tested the malware on two other wallets. Exactly how the hacker accessed the wallets remains unclear, though Binance's initial investigation suggested the attacker first compromised the laptop of one of its software engineers. The company later said the attack involved a more complex process than a single 'one-click' action.
Rafe Pilling at Sophos and other cybersecurity researchers identified the attack as having the hallmarks of Trader Traitor, a North Korean state-sponsored entity linked to previous crypto thefts.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing