Overview
- About $6.3–$6.36 billion was taken from Binance on Oct. 29, 2026, in a roughly 20‑minute coordinated drain across more than ten blockchains that investigators and the FBI attribute to a North Korea‑linked group.
- Binance says the intruders used prolonged social engineering, fake job interviews and tampered developer tools to gain internal access rather than stealing private keys, then abused an Ethereum delegation feature (EIP‑7702) to bundle a roughly $2.5 billion transfer in a single transaction.
- Stablecoin issuers and industry partners froze or intercepted roughly $2.7–$3.0 billion of the stolen tokens and Binance has pledged about $6.34 billion from company reserves to cover losses and restore user balances, reporting it has replaced about 95–98% of affected assets.
- Blockchain firms report about $3.1 billion still sits in attacker‑linked addresses and that laundering has been highly automated across more than 20,000 wallets and multiple chains, with only modest cash‑out so far.
- The breach has prompted U.S. regulators to question banks, insurers to scrutinize crypto exposure and industry voices to call for tougher operational controls and stronger state responses to state‑linked hacking programs.