Binance, one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchange had experienced a high-level security breach, allowing hackers to steal bitcoin of worth $41 million from its hot wallet. But, Is Binance safe? Because Binance was the recent target of the crypto-hackers.
The hackers were implementing the next step by transferring the stolen Bitcoin from one location to others; they have managed to move them to only seven bitcoin addresses. Each of the addresses consists of 1,000 bitcoins, and one address consists of 707.1 bitcoin. The news was revealed by a crypto outlet The Block on May 9th, 2019.
One of the important factors of money laundering is to move funds to different addresses and in this case, moving funds across seven addresses is the key factor of money laundering, according to Amy Castor, the blockchain analyst. Amy Castor believes that by dividing the transaction into smaller parts, it will be harder to monitor them.
The hack resulted in Binance exchange to the loose cryptocurrency of worth $42.8 million. More than 7,000 bitcoin hackers managed to steal. The bitcoin transaction consisted of 44 outputs; out of this 22 outputs were Segregated Witness addresses. The 21 addresses nearly received most of the hacked funds approx — 99.7 percent.
Binance the crypto exchange witnessed the hack on 8th May 2019. This hack is considered to be the largest hack of the year and also of the history within the crypto industry.
As per Confirm a blockchain service company, the bitcoin was moved to different addresses, several times. Depending upon the Confirm analysis it was observed that 1,227 Bitcoin was transferred to two different addresses. One of the addresses consisted of 707 coins and the other 520 coins.
Confirm took it to Twitter to announce along with the graph and posted as follows:
“The Binance hackers once again moved the BTC to new addresses! This time all of it according to an analysis by Confirm.com”
Further wrote:
“After we documented the movement of some yesterday (orange) all of the funds 7070.9 BTC ($41.8m) were moved to 7 new addresses (red).”
The anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing firm (AML/CTF), Confirm was the first company to come forward and analyze the Bitcoin transactions after the hack. If the user wants to see the hacked bitcoin addresses, they can see it even over the blockchain explorer.
The hack resulted in Binance to stop deposits and withdrawal operations over the platform. The firm was transparent in revealing the matter to the public and even quick. Binance said 2 user API keys, 2FA codes and other important data were used by hackers to carry out the attack. This is the 6th biggest hack on the crypto exchange, to notice.
The seven addresses holding the stolen bitcoin are as follows:
- bc1q3a5hd36jrqeseqa27nm40srkgxy8lk0v0tpjtp
- bc1q2rdpyt8ed9pm56u9t0zjf94zrdu6gufa47pf62
- bc1qx3628eh9tdnm0uzculu8k6r2ywfkc5zns2hp0k
- bc1qnf2ja3ffqzc3hskanjse6p8zag52fm6jgmmg9u
- bc1qw7g5uxxl750t0h2fh9xajwuxp4qt634yh3vg5q
- 16SMGihY94H8UjRcxwsLnDtxRt7cRLkvoC
- 1MNwMURYw1LkPnnpda2DQkkUsXXeKL9pmR
Even, before the crypto outlet The Block revealed and confirmed about the addresses, London based AML/CTF, Confirm had announced few of the addresses through Twitter.
In order to prevent such kind of hacks, CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao was planning of implementing Bitcoin chain reorganization but later dropped the plan by taking opinions from several crypto industry experts.