Computer engineer "James Howells" spent 12 years researching a hard drive containing keys to 8,000 bitcoins worth today about $950 million, after he lost it in 2013 in a massive landfill.
Binance announced that Chief Financial Officer Kaiser Ng is leaving his position after more than five years at the company to launch a new venture. It explained that his departure had been planned in advance and that it began implementing a transition plan for his responsibilities about six months ago.
Justin Yik is set to succeed him as CFO.
The departure comes days after the platform’s users were targeted in a hack in which cryptocurrencies worth $6.3 billion were stolen, prompting Binance to suspend withdrawals for several days.
After withdrawals resumed, users recorded net withdrawals of $3.6 billion in the first few hours.
Binance and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation accused a North Korean hacking group known as TraderTraitor of carrying out the attack, while the platform confirmed it would cover all resulting losses.
🟥 Binance co-CEO Richard Teng on the platform hack:
▪️ The attacker used a “self-destruct” mechanism that eliminated the tools and traces of the attack while it was underway
▪️ We are currently rebuilding the withdrawal service and will not reactivate it until it has passed rigorous testing
▪️ We are conducting a comprehensive security review across all company divisions, including endpoints, cloud infrastructure, key management, and digital signing operations
▪️ We will publish a full Proof of Reserves report by Monday
▪️ The part affected by this incident was Binance’s own hot wallet
▪️ The attacker used a known multi-signature protocol called “EIP-7702” to obtain approval to carry out on-chain operations through the hot wallet
Binance suffered the largest security breach in the history of cryptocurrency, estimated at around $6.3 billion. This historic attack sent shockwaves through digital asset markets, causing major cryptocurrencies to decline. Binance acted swiftly in cooperation with its partners in the blockchain sector and managed to freeze nearly $3 billion in affected assets to prevent them from being liquidated. This included Tether freezing around $1.57 billion in USDT and Circle freezing more than $800 million in USDC.
Binance reveals details of its hack… and the culprit was just one employee’s laptop! Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, issued a full statement a short while ago, acknowledging that it had been hacked and revealing details of the incident, which, according to the statement, began with one of its employees’ laptops!