Finally, Binance, the leading cryptocurrency exchange, has restarted its online trading operations after the largest Bitcoin hack. The Binance users can now deposit cryptocurrencies, cancel open orders into their Binance crypto account and can even buy and sell crypto assets.
After the bitcoin hack of worth $40 million, Binance had stopped all of its deposit and withdrawal services due to the security upgrade process. The update process scheduled on 15th May, at 13.00 was successfully completed so as to resume trading operations for its users.
Users can carry different activities as stated above over Binance but cannot withdraw cryptocurrencies to an external wallet; this feature will be available soon, the company mentioned.
Binance CEO, Zhao posted on Twitter saying:
“You can cancel orders now. Trading, placing new orders & deposits resumes in 30 min or so. Withdrawals will follow shortly after that. Thank you for your support in this tough week. A detailed recap will follow.”
Due to the security update process, all the trading services were halted, the update process began at 03.00 UTC on Wednesday, Binance CEO earlier had informed suspending services during the update process to its users but did not reveal the time.
The previous week, was a tough week for Binance due to hack and security update process. The hackers attacked the hot wallet of Binance and stole more than 7000 BTC. The crypto hackers also accessed some other information along with stealing two-factor codes and user API keys so as to transfer $40 million of BTC to their individual wallets. However, Binance CEO informed its users the amount stolen would be recovered through SAFU, and their funds are safe.
Binance CEO Zhao, updated its users mentioning that the developer team would halt all of its trading activities for nearly 8 hours on 15th May 2019, to complete the update process. The Binance security update process commenced on Wednesday at 3.00 UTC, although it took two more extra hours to complete the process due to some issues. The update took more time than expected, the company announced.
More details were not revealed about the update process but look like everything went as per plan.
In the previous week, Binance said it was making important changes to API and two-factor codes and also to withdrawal verification areas, one of the areas the hackers used during the hack.
The hackers quickly moved the stolen fund to seven different addresses, which were revealed earlier. To counter this, Binance started taking help from popular blockchain security expert teams so as to monitor the hackers and worked with other exchanges and service providers to freeze the stolen BTC.
Binance further mentioned:
“sharing too many security details actually weakens [the] security response strategy.”
However, Binance did say that is worked on user behavior analysis, KYC processes and enhancing risk management and also how to handle phishing with innovative techniques.
Binance users were in shock to notice the funds missing from their account, and Binance exchange took responsibility for the hack on Tuesday.
Binance is further intending to add advanced support to hardware authentication devices beginning with Yubikey.