Binance Hit by $6.3B Hack, the Largest Crypto Theft on Record

Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, said on 29 October 2026 that a security incident impacted an estimated $6.3 billion in digital assets — far above the previous record, the $1.5 billion Bybit hack of February 2025.

Attack method: Binance's initial investigation suggests a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop let an attacker access a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions. Binance says it found no evidence of any wallet private-key leak.

TRM Labs estimates about $6.36 billion moved across 10 blockchains, mostly within roughly 20 minutes, with preparations starting at least 36 hours earlier using Tornado Cash to fund wallets. TRM Labs and Chainalysis attribute the attack to TraderTraitor, a North Korean state-sponsored unit. Per CoinDesk citing Arkham, the attacker's wallets at one point held over $5.7 billion, including nearly $1.5 billion in BTC and $900 million in ETH, with funds moved via Uniswap and Aave.

Response: About $3 billion has been frozen on-chain, including $2.3 billion in USDT and USDC; Tether, Circle and Ripple froze linked funds. Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals, revoked the affected address authorization, engaged law enforcement and says it will cover all losses from its SAFU fund and company funds. Co-founder Yi He said withdrawals should start resuming within 48 hours. Bitcoin fell more than 4% to below $78,000.

Sources: Binance, CNBC, CNBC analysis, CoinDesk, BBC.