Crypto giant Binance hit by $6.3bn hack suspected to be largest in history

Cryptocurrency giant Binance said on Thursday that $6. 3bn (£4. 7bn) in digital assets were affected by what is believed to be the biggest crypto hack on record. The world’s biggest crypto exchange said about half of those assets had been frozen, but many remained in the hackers’ hands, adding that it will “cover all losses”. The company said while initial checks suggested an engineer’s laptop had been compromised, allowing an attacker to make unauthorised withdrawals, “our subsequent investigation has uncovered additional points of breach”. Two analytics firms have attributed the incident, which eclipses a record-setting $1. 5bn hack on the Bybit exchange in 2025, to a North Korean hacking unit called TraderTraitor. Cybersecurity firm Check Point said the unit is also known in the industry as Lazarus Group, which has been blamed for the 2025 hack.

Check Point’s chief information security officer, Jayant Dave, said the losses Binance estimated made it “the largest crypto theft on record”. AI-powered investigations company TRM Labs said in a report that several elements of the Binance attack resemble earlier North Korean-linked incidents, including the Bybit hack. The lab’s global head of policy Ari Redbord told the BBC the Binance hack is a “watershed moment” that is unlike anything the industry has seen. The attacker still holds a massive sum of stolen assets, so efforts to trace and recover the funds are far from over, Redbord added. Binance, which was founded in China in 2017, allows users to trade digital assets and is estimated to have more than 300 million registered users worldwide. In 2024, the company said it has more than $160bn in assets under its custody. The exchange has been subject of regulatory scrutiny around the world. Chainalysis, a crypto analytics…