Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, has confirmed that it lost nearly $ 41 million in Bitcoin, a theft that is rated as the largest hack to date.
In a statement, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the company on May 7 suffered a "breach security large-scale”, as a result of which the hackers stole approximately 7000 bitcoins, which at today's exchange rate amount to 40,6 million US dollars.
The news about the hack comes just hours after Zhao's Tweet that Binance has "to perform some unscheduled maintenance, which will affect deposits and withdrawals for a few hours".
According to the company, the attackers used various attack techniques, including phishing, to carry out the attack. They managed to hack a BTC hot wallet (a wallet connected to thenetwork) which contained 2% of the total BTC held by the company and steal the Bitcoins in a single transaction.
Most worryingly, the company has acknowledged that hackers have been able to obtain critical user information, such as API keys, two-factor IDs, and potentially other information required to sign in to a Binance account.
Zhao also warned that "hackers can still check some user accounts and use them to influence prices."
Fortunately, the offline wallets, where the majority of Binance funds are kept, remain secure. Personal wallets connected to the Internet were also not directly affected.
Binance has suspended all deposits and withdrawals on its platform for about a weekteam, while thoroughly reviewing her safety and investigating the incident.
The CEO of Binance said that the company last year created an internal insurance mechanism, called Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), which will cover the entire amount of the hack and will not affect users.
