One of the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchanges has been hacked with nearly £31m in Bitcoins stolen.
Hackers were able to withdraw 7,000 Bitcoin worth £30.9m with just one transaction as they used “a variety of techniques, including phishing, viruses and other attacks,” Binance said.
Changpeng Zhao, chief executive of the Japan-based exchange said the transaction represent “about 2%” of the total of Binance’s Bitcoin holdings.
Zhao said Binance will use their secure asset fund “to cover this incident in full” and a “thorough security review” will be conducted.
All withdrawals and deposits are suspended whilst the review is being carried out, it is expected to take a week.
Zhao who is known as CZ tweeted, “Not the best of days, but we will stay transparent.”
CZ said in an online message, “The hackers had the patience to wait, and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time.
“The transaction [was] structured in a way that passed our existing security checks.
“It was unfortunate that we were not able to block this withdrawal before it was executed.
“Once executed, the withdrawal triggered various alarms in our system. We stopped all withdrawals immediately after that.”
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