By Mayank Chhaya-
The largest crypto heist in history amounting to $6.4 billion from Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, is being attributed to automation deployed by a North Korean cybercrime group called TraderTraitor.
Chainalysis, a leading crypto analytics firm, which issued a detailed report about the heist today, said, “As Chainalysis investigators continue to trace funds stolen from Binance, we are observing laundering patterns we have not seen before. Thousands of transactions in a short period suggest that the attackers are using automation to obscure the trail of funds. Rather than simply moving funds onward, they repeatedly circulate them among addresses, often sending funds back to addresses involved earlier in the sequence.”
“Several laundering patterns initially suggested that TraderTraitor was responsible for the Binance theft. The strongest evidence emerged when Chainalysis investigators observed, in real time, funds stolen from Binance commingling with funds stolen in last month’s Bitget exploit, which had been attributed to North Korean actors. That direct on-chain link strengthened our assessment that TraderTraitor carried out the Binance hack and we announced it on October 30, 12:30am Eastern Time,” the firm said.
According to Chainalysis funds began leaving Binance hot wallets across multiple blockchains around 4:20 p.m. ET on October 29, 2026. “Unauthorized transfers totaled approximately $6.4 billion, the largest theft in crypto history,” it said.
Although freezes began by 5:14 p.m. ET and about $2.8 billion has been frozen, the hackers had managed to move $2.4 billion in crypto beyond any issuer’s reach.
“The attacker swapped $325 million in stablecoins for $285 million in ETH over nearly 20 minutes to stay ahead of freezes” the firm said adding that ten minutes later, “the exploiter sent the remaining $175 million in stablecoins to stopover wallets, likely trying to move faster than a blacklist or freeze.” That adds up to $785b in just half an hour. It is hardly surprising that the hack is being described as “one of the single-largest financial crimes of all time.”
Describing in specific terms what happened, Chainalysis said, “On Ethereum, the attacker used an operational wallet funded through Tornado Cash to submit valid signed authorizations that allowed a Binance hot wallet to run attacker-deployed code. The attacker then called that wallet to sweep its assets into attacker-controlled addresses, while other affected Binance wallets appeared to send funds through ordinary signed transfers.”
The hackers were in a race with the issuers who could freeze a part of the crypto.
Against the backdrop of this giant theft, there are growing worries about other hackers deploying artificial intelligence agents to breach other financial institutions. It is true that crypto exchanges are not nearly as secure as traditional banks and other financial institutions. After the Binance hack, the industry is expected to be shaken to its foundations to ensure that they keep ahead of hackers.
Binance’s founder Changpeng Zhao, said on his X account “It hurts, but we will survive.” The company said “Binance has begun recovering affected assets for users and continues to work with law enforcement, issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners to trace, freeze and recover additional funds.
The company has already publicly committed to cover losses.”
[Photo courtesy:IANS]
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘761292977407232’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
Click Here For The Original Source.
——————————————————–
