Crypto giant Binance hit by 'largest hack in history'

What the report says

Crypto exchange Binance said on Thursday that about $6.3bn in digital assets were affected by what has been described as the largest hack ever seen in the sector. The company said roughly half of the assets had been frozen with help from other platforms and added that it would cover all losses. Binance also said initial checks suggested the breach may have involved a compromised engineer’s laptop, which then enabled unauthorized withdrawals.

BBC World News reported that two analytics firms linked the incident to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking unit. TRM Labs said aspects of the attack resembled earlier North Korea-related crypto thefts, while Chainalysis said it had high confidence in that connection. Binance did not directly address the North Korea allegation in response to BBC queries, but said it was working with law enforcement to identify those responsible and bring them to justice.

The company said the issue affects Binance.com and not Binance.US. Yi He, Binance’s co-chief executive, said withdrawals were temporarily disabled while the exchange checked its systems. Other firms in the crypto sector, including Tether and Circle, said they had frozen funds tied to the incident, while Coinbase said it was not affected. The case matters because Binance is the world’s largest crypto trading platform and the reported losses exceed the previous record hack at Bybit in 2025. Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies fell after the alerts.