Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said Friday, October 30, that the exchange’s estimated $6.3 billion security breach was more complex than a single employee inadvertently authorizing a withdrawal. His statement sought to reassure customers while acknowledging that investigators were still tracing how attackers gained access to the exchange’s transaction systems.
Teng said Binance’s initial findings point to a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop that may have allowed an attacker to enter a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawals. But he pushed back on the idea that one person’s permissions alone could explain the attack. He said investigators had not assigned blame to an individual, and the company had found no evidence so far that wallet private keys were leaked.
That distinction matters because unauthorized transactions do not necessarily require an attacker to extract a wallet’s secret keys. An intrusion into the systems authorized to request or sign transactions may be sufficient, depending on how an exchange’s controls are configured. The specific path used at Binance remains under investigation; Teng’s statement is not a completed forensic explanation.
Binance Estimates $6.3 Billion Affected, $3 Billion Frozen
Binance’s October 30 security update estimates the total affected assets at about $6.3 billion, with approximately $3 billion frozen on-chain through cooperation with blockchain partners. The estimated impact is not the same as the exchange’s final net loss, and frozen assets are not necessarily recovered assets.
The exchange says it has revoked affected address authorizations, brought in law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners, and pledged to cover customer losses using its SAFU reserve and corporate funds. Its subsequent service update says deposits are operating normally while withdrawals remain temporarily paused during a security overhaul. Binance expects withdrawals to resume within 48 hours of that update, subject to further checks.
Those assurances are company commitments, not an independent confirmation that every affected account has been reimbursed. Binance has promised a technical post-mortem and an updated Proof of Reserves once its remediation work is complete.
Security Firms Investigate the Attack Path
Associated Press reporting cites TRM Labs and Chainalysis assessments linking the activity to North Korea’s TraderTraitor operation. That attribution is a finding by outside security researchers, not a completed public law-enforcement determination. Reports also describe transactions across multiple blockchains, raising questions about access controls and the systems that approve withdrawals.
Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the exchange, separately thanked Tether and Circle for freezing substantial amounts of affected stablecoins. He said he expected customer losses to be covered. Teng’s statement supplies more detail about the current management team’s investigation rather than replacing that earlier reassurance.
The critical unanswered questions are how the attacker moved through the environment, which signing and authorization controls failed, and whether other access paths were involved. Teng says Binance will provide a detailed public account after the evidence is verified. Until then, customers should rely on official exchange updates rather than unverified recovery messages or requests for wallet credentials.
BitcoinVersus.Tech previously covered the initial Binance hack investigation and Zhao’s exchange with Elon Musk. Teng’s remarks add a more detailed account of the suspected intrusion while the final findings remain pending.
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