Binance Security Incident: Withdrawals Paused, $2.54 Billion Frozen

Binance is handling what it calls a security incident after BleepingComputer and on-chain trackers reported billions of dollars in crypto leaving its hot wallets on the evening of 29 October (UTC). The exchange has paused withdrawals on several networks and says "the current verified total frozen is $2.54 billion", working with law enforcement. It hasn't published a loss figure or a cause. Founder Changpeng Zhao wrote that "it does look like a hack on Binance".

What left the wallets

BleepingComputer reports that about $2.53 billion across 64 tokens moved out of a hot wallet labelled Binance 14, and $174.4 million left a second wallet 24 seconds later. Estimates of the total differ by billions: security firm Blockaid counts about $3.3 billion in suspicious outflows, and Coinbase's Conor Grogan put it at up to $5.8 billion.

The Block reports that the attacking address was funded with 0.1 ETH from Tornado Cash.

The freezes

Zhao wrote that Tether and Circle had frozen tokens sent to the attacker, and Binance co-founder Yi He thanked Ripple for "promptly freezing approximately 200 million". Binance says its frozen total "may continue to increase".

The drain reached Aave. Decrypt reports that an address linked to the drain deposited about 60 million USDT into Aave and borrowed 19,762 ETH, after which Aave froze its V3 Ethereum markets.

For Binance customers

Binance says "user funds are completely safe" and that withdrawals "will resume as soon as the security issue is fully resolved"; a spokesperson told TechCrunch the pause is "a precautionary measure". Zhao, quoting a DefiLlama analyst's estimate of about $1 billion in net losses, wrote that the loss "might be a bit higher than that, but will cover".