Astana, 4 November, . The hackers who stole 6.34 billion dollars in assets from the Binance crypto exchange began the attack months earlier, gaining access to developers’ computers through a fake job interview and an infected “test assignment”, Binance said in a preliminary report.
According to the exchange, a developer was offered a job and asked at a second interview to download an assignment containing malicious code; another employee was given a tampered developer tool, after which the attackers used an internal AI tool to reach the system that signs wallet transactions. The funds were drained on the night of 29 to 30 October. According to the exchange’s co-chief executive Richard Teng, by 3 November the company had replenished 98% of the affected assets with its own funds, and about 2.85 billion dollars had been frozen or intercepted. The entry points, the exchange said, have been closed and the affected systems rebuilt. As the BBC writes, the attackers used several fake job interviews.
What it means: The largest theft in crypto history began not with broken code but with people trusting an interviewer — the cheapest route for attackers.
Who benefits: The exchange’s customers, whose losses Binance itself is covering, and cybersecurity specialists, who get a detailed map of the attack; who will recover the stolen money, and when, is unknown.
Background: On 30 October the National Bank of Kazakhstan said the Binance hack had not affected the country’s crypto reserve.
