Binance Hit by $6.3 Billion Theft: $3 Billion Frozen, Engineer's Computer Compromise Identified as Potential Entry Point

Judgment

Binance users deciding whether to keep funds on the exchange must weigh a disclosed $6.3B impact and $3B frozen against Binance's pledge of more than $6.34B in company funds, while withdrawals remain suspended pending remediation.

Basis

Binance said its Oct. 29 EDT preliminary investigation pointed to a compromised DevOps engineer laptop, access to a service container, and unauthorized withdrawal submissions; a later update identified additional intrusion points, called the attack sophisticated, and said multiple factors were involved, with the laptop possibly an entry point. Binance estimated about $6.3B total impact, worked with partners to freeze around $3B on-chain (prior verified frozen total: $2.54B), and set aside more than $6.34B in company funds, with about $5B already held in affected tokens and the remainder being purchased via market and OTC channels. Frozen assets are excluded and recovery/verification remain pending. Deposits were unaffected, withdrawals were suspended, and resumption was expected within 45 hours of the statement. Blockaid said the EIP-7702 authorization for Binance 14 contained a valid signature; a valid signature alone does not prove private-key leakage, since an attacker could abuse a system authorized to request signatures. The full attack path and how valid signatures were generated remain unconfirmed.