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 that the company on May 7 it suffered a “large-scale security breach”, as a result of which hackers stole approximately 7000 bitcoins, which at today’s exchange rate amounts 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 the Internet) which contained 2% of the total BTC held by the company and steal the Bitcoins in a single transaction.
More worryingly, the company acknowledged that hackers managed to get their hands on critical user information such as API keys, passwords ID cardtwo-factor and potentially other information, which is required to log into a Binance account.
Zhao also warned that "hackers can still check some user accounts and use them to influence prices."
Fortunately, offline wallets, where the majority of Binance funds are held, remain safe. Personal wallets connected to the Internet were also not directly affected.
Binance has suspended all deposits and withdrawals on platform her for about a week while she thoroughly reviews her safety and investigates 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.
