Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, revealed on Thursday that a security breach on its platform impacted approximately $6.3 billion in assets. The company has managed to freeze nearly $3 billion of those assets on-chain, mitigating some of the damage. Tether and Circle have also taken steps to freeze over 1.567 billion USDT and 800 million in related assets, respectively, while the Arbitrum Security Council froze about $30.5 million linked to the exploit.
Binance's initial investigation suggests that the breach may have originated from a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, allowing an attacker to access a service container and execute unauthorized withdrawal transactions. The company emphasized that there is no evidence of a wallet private key leak and pledged to cover all losses using its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and its own funds.
In response to the incident, Binance has temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while conducting security checks. The company has also revoked the affected address authorization and is collaborating with law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover the stolen funds. Binance stated that it is working closely with authorities to identify and bring the criminals to justice.
The incident marks the largest cryptocurrency heist recorded to date, surpassing the $1.5 billion theft from Bybit in February 2025, which was later attributed to North Korea. Blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis reported that the estimated amount stolen is approximately $5.912 billion at the time of the theft, nearly four times the amount stolen in the next largest crypto heist.