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Binance's chief financial officer has left the company, a week after the exchange suffered a $6.3 billion hack. Co-CEO Yi He told Bloomberg the leadership transition had been planned over the past six months and was unrelated to the security breach.
Binance confirmed that chief financial officer Kaiser Ng is leaving the exchange after more than five years, with co-CEO Yi He saying the move allows him to pursue a new venture and that a transition plan had been in place for six months. Justin Yek will succeed Ng as CFO. The announcement follows a $6.3 billion hack of Binance users' crypto, which the company and FBI attributed to the North Korean group TraderTraitor.
Following a major hack affecting Binance, insurers covering crypto assets are likely to tighten policy language and strengthen security reviews, according to Reuters. The insurers may also add new exclusions to their coverage terms in response to the breach.
A podcast discussion between Patrick McKenzie and Zvi Mowshowitz examines Anthropic's IPO filing (S-1), highlighting a founder-controlled share structure where a single Class F share holds 50.1% of voting power, an uncapped 3:1 employee donation-matching program, and roughly $900 billion in forward compute commitments. The pair also note that Anthropic's softer Q3 revenue appears driven by limited GPU supply rather than weak customer demand.
Binance CEO Richard Teng told CNBC that the exchange has restored 98% of the $6.34 billion in assets affected by last week's breach, with remaining illiquid holdings still being repurchased. Other crypto firms including Tether, Circle, Ripple and Coinbase moved to freeze or block roughly $3 billion in stolen funds and offered support during the incident.
Binance disclosed that attackers spent months preparing an Oct. 29 breach that netted $6.34 billion in crypto, starting with a tampered software installation downloaded by a wallet DevOps engineer in June. The company says it has rebuilt the affected wallet system and internal AI tools, replaced compromised devices, and revoked credentials tied to exposed staff. Co-CEO Richard Teng said Binance has replenished 98% of the stolen assets and is still buying back remaining, less liquid holdings.
Binance disclosed that North Korean hackers posed as job recruiters to contact a wallet-team engineer, then convinced them to download a malicious 'coding assignment' that bypassed the company's security tools. The initial breach let attackers pivot through an internal tool to compromise two more engineers' machines, eventually gaining access to systems controlling billions in crypto assets, resulting in a record $6.3 billion theft.
Binance published a security update attributing last week's theft of $6.34 billion from its wallets to a social-engineering attack in which an engineer downloaded malicious software during a fake job interview. The exchange said hackers used that foothold to move through its network, exploit an internal AI tool, and access a wallet signing service to make unauthorized transactions outside normal withdrawal controls on October 29.
Binance released a postmortem detailing how a months-long attack led to the largest crypto theft on record. It began in June when an engineer downloaded a malware-laced installer via a Google ad, continued in September when another engineer was lured through a fake hiring process into installing malware disguised as an interview assignment, and culminated on October 29th when attackers used Binance's internal AI tool to seize control of employee wallets.
Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said attackers spent months infiltrating the exchange's systems, starting in June with a fake developer tool that compromised an engineer's device, followed by sham job interviews in September that delivered hidden malware. The intruders then moved through Binance's internal AI tools to gain access to wallet transaction authorization, resulting in the Oct. 29 theft of more than $6.3 billion in assets. Teng said Binance has restored 98% of the affected funds and is still buying back remaining illiquid assets.
Binance disclosed that attackers used a multi-stage social engineering campaign, including bogus job interviews, to compromise an engineer's computer, then used a hijacked internal AI tool to take control of two more employees' laptops. This access was used to drain Binance's wallets of $6.3bn in cryptocurrency, prompting the exchange to suspend global withdrawals until service resumed on Sunday.
Reports indicate a surge of crypto thefts and security incidents in recent weeks, with a $6.3 billion hack affecting Binance drawing the most attention. Numerous smaller breaches across the industry have reportedly gone largely unreported amid the focus on the larger incident.