Binance Restores 90% of Stolen Assets Following $6.3 Billion Security Breach

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has covered 90% of the $6.3 billion (£4.7 billion) in digital assets stolen during a major cyberattack on Thursday, with company officials confirming that work remains ongoing to source the remaining 10%.

The company committed to fully absorbing the financial fallout of what is suspected to be the largest cryptocurrency heist on record. "Binance will absorb the financial impact of these stolen funds, not our users," the exchange said in a statement on Saturday, adding that it has allocated more than $6.34 billion in corporate treasury and reserve funds to cover user balances.

Asset Recovery and Service Timeline

Binance stated that it has replenished holdings across major tokens including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether, alongside seven other widely traded cryptocurrencies. The exchange reported that it remains on track to resume customer deposit and withdrawal services on Sunday, 1 November 2026.

Efforts to recover the missing capital are active. On Friday, Binance confirmed it had frozen approximately $3 billion of the illicitly transferred funds in coordination with law enforcement agencies, blockchain intelligence firms, and industry partners. The US Secret Service confirmed it is working with private sector firms to trace and recover the assets.

Attribution and Vector Analysis

On Saturday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) formally named North Korea as the entity responsible for the attack, specifically identifying the state-backed Lazarus Group—also known as TraderTraitor. Blockchain analytics firms had previously cited intelligence pointing to the organization. North Korea has consistently denied involvement in cyber operations of this nature.

Initial findings by Binance indicated an engineer's compromised laptop served as an entry point for unauthorized withdrawals. A subsequent technical update noted that investigators discovered "additional points of breach."

Binance Co-Chief Executive Officer Richard Teng noted that the attack involved multiple perpetrators utilizing sophisticated techniques to obfuscate their tracks, including a "self-destruct mechanism" built into the exploit code.

Industry Scale

The $6.3 billion theft eclipses the previous record cryptocurrency exploit—a $1.5 billion breach of the Bybit exchange in 2025, which the FBI also linked to North Korean cyber units. Founded in 2017 in China, Binance operates as the world's largest digital asset trading venue by volume, serving hundreds of millions of users globally.