Binance Halts Withdrawals After $6.3bn Breach, Freezes $3bn in Assets

Binance has temporarily suspended withdrawals after a security breach that exposed the exchange to about $6.3 billion in losses. The company says it has frozen roughly $3 billion in assets and will absorb every loss using its emergency reserve and company money.

Binance co-CEO Richard Teng disclosed the freeze in a post on X on Friday, saying the company worked with industry partners to block the assets on the blockchain. He insisted customer funds and deposits remain safe.

How the attack started

Teng said preliminary findings point to a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer. From that machine, the attacker gained access to a service container and used it to submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions.

He stressed that the breach involved a sophisticated chain of actions, not a simple compromise of one employee's access privileges. "Our initial investigation suggests this security incident may have started with a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop. That gave an attacker access to a service container, where they submitted unauthorised withdrawal transactions," he said.

Investigators have not identified any individual behind the incident. Binance also found no evidence that wallet private keys were exposed during the attack.

Withdrawals, deposits and recovery

Withdrawals were suspended while the exchange tightened security around its withdrawal services and the addresses linked to them. Deposits were not affected and continued to run normally. Binance has withdrawn the authorisations tied to the affected addresses and is working with law enforcement agencies and blockchain intelligence firms to trace and recover the stolen funds.

The exchange will draw on its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and corporate funds to cover the full loss. SAFU was set up as an extra layer of protection for users during unexpected security events.

"Bottom line, your money is safe, and we're covering every loss," Teng said. He added that a full technical report on how the breach happened and what was done about it will be published once the investigation is completed and the findings verified.

Pressure on crypto platforms

The incident underlines the security risk that hangs over crypto exchanges as hackers keep targeting digital asset platforms and their infrastructure. Binance recently placed restrictions on 17 cryptocurrency platforms globally, including three Nigerian-linked entities, after US Treasury sanctions against a Dubai-based exchange and EU measures targeting other platforms. Users were warned that transactions involving the listed platforms would be affected after the effective dates.

For Nigerian traders, the immediate signal is that the exchange is still honouring balances, with deposits running and losses charged to its own reserve rather than to customer accounts.