Binance Estimates Security Breach Losses at $6.3 Billion, Suspects Employee Laptop Hack

Binance has estimated losses from the latest security incident at about $6.3 billion. The global cryptocurrency exchange said the attacker may have accessed internal systems by compromising a laptop used by an employee responsible for development and operations.

Binance disclosed the preliminary findings in a post on its official X account on Oct. 29. According to the exchange, the attacker accessed the runtime environment for internal services through a DevOps engineer's laptop and then submitted unauthorized withdrawal transactions. DevOps combines software development and systems operations.

Binance said it found no evidence that wallet private keys were leaked. That indicates the attacker may have abused internal systems rather than directly stealing the secret keys needed to move crypto assets. The exact attack path will be determined through further investigation.

The amount of funds frozen totals about $3 billion. Binance said it worked with blockchain industry partners to freeze related assets and will cover all losses using its SAFU user protection fund and company funds.

It also said it would update and disclose its proof of reserves after its response to the incident is complete. As a preventive measure, the exchange temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals and revoked permissions tied to the affected addresses.

Binance is now working with investigative authorities and blockchain analytics firms to trace and recover the funds. It plans to publish a detailed technical report once the investigation is complete and the facts are confirmed.