Binance suspends withdrawals after incident estimated at $6.3 billion

Binance made public, in an update released on October 30 at 2:23, a security incident that the company itself estimates to involve $6.3 billion. According to the account provided by the company, access was gained through the compromised laptop of a DevOps engineer, from which unauthorized withdrawal transactions were allegedly initiated.

Binance states it has found no evidence of a leak of users’ wallet private keys, a point on which the company chose to be explicit in its communication. Of the total estimated figure, approximately $3 billion has been frozen on-chain, according to the platform itself.

As an immediate measure, Binance temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals. The company also stated its intention to cover any remaining losses by drawing on the SAFU guarantee fund and its own corporate funds.

The information available so far comes from the official communication released by Binance itself. For the part concerning the dynamics of the attack and the estimate of the funds involved, this is therefore the account provided by the platform directly involved: no independent verification by regulatory authorities has been found in the sources consulted, either regarding the figure of $6.3 billion or the technical reconstruction of the access via the compromised device.

This limitation concerns in particular two elements: the exact extent of the funds involved and the absence, as declared by the company, of evidence of a compromise of the private keys. Both points, at this time, rest on the version released by Binance and not on a third-party assessment.

It remains to be seen what portion of the funds involved will actually be recovered through the on-chain freeze already initiated, and when the platform will fully restore deposits and withdrawals.