Binance遭60亿美元黑客攻击，FBI指认朝鲜黑客所为

In late October, hackers syphoned off more than $6 billion from cryptocurrency exchange Binance. This is by far the largest hack of a crypto exchange on record. We have never seen anything of this size or scale before. And Binance now at the moment saying that they verified that the total frozen amount is around three billion. Binance is the world's largest crypto trading platform with about $135 billion in assets. That's nearly five times the 28 billion held by its nearest rival, OKX.

How could something like this happen and how could it happen in the world of crypto? I thought the whole point was everything is recorded on the blockchain. Destabilising trust in Binance then leads to a knock-on effect of "Can I trust crypto?" if the biggest exchange involved doesn't necessarily have the best security? So, what do we know about how the biggest crypto heist in history happened and what might the repercussions be for Binance and the industry at large?

Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange, which is a place where people can buy and sell different cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether, any of the ones you've usually heard of. It serves about 300 million customers globally. It controls about 44% of spot volume on any given day. The volumes of transactions on an annual basis are in the trillions of dollars. Late on October 29th, the company announced that it had been compromised.

Rest assured that we're working nonstop to resolve this, to make the users whole and live up to your trust. Binance said an attacker had gained access to its systems by exploiting a vulnerability in a company laptop, which enabled them to steal money from various wallets on the exchange. Cyber experts looking at what happened with this hack suggest that the hackers potentially got access to internal Binance software to push through transactions across 10 different blockchains.

In this case, that's things like Bitcoin, Ether, and dollar-backed so-called stablecoins. Binance responded by suspending all withdrawals, and the FBI said it was investigated. About half of the assets have been frozen so far while the rest have been taken away by the attacker. By Sunday, Binance had restored withdrawals and said the flight of funds eased after an initial spike. While the amount stolen is staggering, Binance had contingencies in place.

An emergency fund called the Secure Asset Fund for Users was established in 2018 to serve as a backstop for customers in extreme cases. At some points it's been about a billion US dollars precisely for these kind of events. One of the founders even said that their entire revenue for this year can comfortably cover whatever was lost in this hack. Blockchain intelligence companies and the FBI pointed the finger at North Korea.

This is a hack by a nation state. The FBI is tying the hack to TraderTraitor. That's an elite North Korean hacking unit. They've been able to do this because the way the funds have been laundered by the attackers looks very similar to the way that these groups have laundered funds in the past, specifically a group called TraderTraitor, which is part of the wider Lazarus group. North Korea has a long history of using cyber tools to hack and steal cryptocurrencies, and that is partly and largely down to the fact that it is in one of the most heavily sanctioned countries on the planet, and they've proven to be very, very effective at carrying out cyber attacks, targeting crypto exchanges and crypto companies across the world.

So far, crypto stocks and digital assets have been relatively stable compared to the fallout that could have transpired. There was an immediate set off that did happen when Binance first disclosed the attack. That did mean that Bitcoin sold off a little bit somewhat. Since then though, it's not really had that much of an impact. We expect that's mostly because different companies, exchanges, market-makers have a lot of confidence in Binance's ability to cover the funds from this.

Still, it raised concern across the investor base that this was another exchange impacted by a significant cyber attack. The next largest hack was about 1.5 billion that was stolen from Bybit last year. For many, this will be a reminder of the inherent risks still within the crypto industry. One thing that this hack has shown, however, is that the industry has a lot of faith in Binance's ability to cover losses when these kinds of things happen.

The focus from here will be on can Binance ensure that its balance sheet remains solid on the back of this? Can they ensure and reassure their customers that they have safeguards in place to make sure this never happens again? For institutions though, they want to know that crypto is impregnable just like a bank would be, but certain amounts of crypto probably just come with a bit of risk and institutions will have to always accept that bit of risk if they want to play in this playground.