Most of the stories about the $6.3 billion heist at Binance call it the biggest heist in crypto history. That might be underselling it a bit: The hack is the "largest bank heist in human history," is how Ari Redbord of blockchain analytics firm TRM puts it, reports the Wall Street Journal. And what's remarkable is that it took a team of hackers only about 20 minutes to drain wallets at the cryptocurrency exchange, reports Wired. Three blockchain-tracking firms say the techniques bear the hallmarks of North Korea-linked hackers, most likely its infamous TraderTraitor crew.
"This is state-sponsored theft at a scale that no criminal group comes close to, with the proceeds funding North Korea's weapons programs," Tom Robinson of the analytics firm Elliptic tells the Journal. Once the hackers moved the digital funds out of the Binance wallets, they raced to put them out of reach, per Reuters. That was only partially successful, however: About $2.8 billion of the stolen funds, mostly stablecoins, have been frozen by their issuers. The rest, largely bitcoin, ether, and XRP, may be far harder to stop. Binance initially said the hackers may have gotten in through a compromised laptop, but "our subsequent investigation has uncovered additional points of breach," it said, without elaboration. The company says it will cover all customer losses.
A TRM blog post gets into the nitty-gritty of how the hack happened, including:
- "Early on October 29, the operator deployed a first piece of code for the attack and tested it on two wallets," it reads. "Later that day, it rehearsed the final version on a third wallet, then routed the test funds back to itself. Four hours after that rehearsal, the same code was installed on a Binance hot wallet." Hot wallets allow crypto exchanges to handle customer withdrawals.
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