World’s largest crypto exchange hit by cyberattack
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has estimated the impact of a cyberattack at $6.3 billion, saying hackers may have exploited an employee’s compromised laptop to make unauthorized withdrawals.
In an update on Friday, the company said its preliminary investigation suggested that an attacker gained access to a service container through a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, allowing unauthorized withdrawal transactions to be submitted.
Binance said it found no evidence that wallet private keys were leaked and pledged to cover all losses using its Secure Asset Fund for Users and company funds.
“The estimated total impact sits at around $6.3B. We have worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with ~$3 billion frozen on-chain so far,” the exchange said in a statement.
The company stressed that customer funds are safe and said it would publish a detailed technical report once its investigation is complete.
As an immediate precaution, Binance temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals, and conducted security checks. It also revoked the affected address authorization and enlisted law enforcement and blockchain intelligence firms to trace and recover funds and identify those responsible.
The incident follows reports of suspicious transactions involving billions of dollars in digital assets transferred from wallets linked to Binance on Thursday.
Blockchain researchers initially estimated the outflows at $2.77 billion across five blockchains. Binance subsequently confirmed that $2.54 billion in affected assets were frozen.
Stablecoin issuers Tether, Circle, and Ripple were among the companies that moved to freeze assets linked to the suspected attack.
The suspected attack comes amid a series of major cryptocurrency thefts this year. In September, hackers stole around $388 million from the Bitget exchange. Attacks on the Drift Protocol and Kelp DAO platforms in April resulted in losses of $285 million and $292 million, respectively. In February 2025, suspected North Korean hackers stole around $1.5 billion from Bybit in what was widely described as the largest cryptocurrency heist on record at the time.
Binance co-founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating US anti-money-laundering laws and stepped down as head of the exchange as part of a settlement in which Binance agreed to pay $4.3 billion in penalties. He subsequently served a four-month prison sentence.
US President Donald Trump pardoned Zhao in October 2025. The White House defended the decision, saying he was unfairly prosecuted under former President Joe Biden as part of a broader crackdown on the cryptocurrency industry.
