Binance resumes withdrawals after $6 billion hack tied to North Korea

Binance Holdings Ltd. is gradually restoring withdrawals after saying it lost $6 billion in an unauthorized crypto drain. For PSPs and exchanges, the important part is not just the size of the incident, but that the attack hit transaction approval controls and spread across multiple blockchains in minutes.

1. Binance said on October 31 that it would resume withdrawals of major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin. The company said it had recovered 95% of the stolen assets, while the remaining 5% are low-liquidity assets that will take longer to secure.
2. The exchange said the breach was first disclosed on the 29th, when it reported that $6 billion worth of cryptocurrency had been withdrawn without authorization. The attack targeted an engineer’s hacked laptop and a vulnerability in the transaction approval system.
3. Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs said hackers stole about $6.36 billion from Binance wallets across 10 Blockchains, with most of the activity happening within 20 minutes. That kind of speed matters: once approval controls are compromised, the window to freeze flows gets very small very quickly.
4. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said North Korea was behind the incident. In a statement released that day, the FBI said North Korea was responsible for the theft from Binance Holdings Ltd., the world’s largest virtual asset exchange, and identified the North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor.