BINANCE REPORTS $6.3BN SECURITY BREACH

Binance said on Thursday that a security breach affected about $6.3bn in assets and prompted it to suspend deposits and withdrawals. Accounts differ on whether attackers stole the entire $6.3bn or the figure measures assets affected by the breach. The exchange said it had frozen or recovered about $3bn with partners. Binance co-founder Yi He said the company would cover “all hacking losses”. Binance told users their funds were “safe”.

Binance said its initial investigation suggested that an attacker accessed an engineer’s compromised laptop, entered one of its systems and made unauthorised withdrawals. The exchange said it was working with law enforcement to identify those responsible. Founder and largest shareholder Changpeng Zhao had earlier said Binance appeared to have been hacked. Blockchain intelligence firm TRM said it assessed with “high confidence” that North Korea’s TraderTraitor unit carried out the attack. Binance said it would publish a detailed technical account after completing its investigation.

Analytics firm Chainalysis and other industry specialists said the breach could be the largest cryptocurrency theft on record. Bitcoin fell more than 3% to a six-week low of $76,368 in early Asian trading on Friday, while ether fell more than 3% to a two-month low of $2,178. According to CoinGecko, BNB fell 5% over 24 hours to $709.70. In extended US trading, Coinbase Global shares fell 4.8% and Strategy shares fell nearly 6%. TRM policy chief Ari Redbord said theft on this scale could fund North Korean weapons programmes.