Binance has fully recovered all $6.3 billion in digital assets stolen from customers during an October cyberattack, the cryptocurrency exchange announced Thursday.
The theft occurred on Oct. 29 in what authorities and analysts have attributed to North Korea. The attack targeted various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and less common tokens that required additional time for Binance to locate and repurchase.
Binance used a combination of company profits and emergency reserves to quickly restore most of the stolen tokens within days of the breach. The exchange had previously stated that approximately 10% of the funds would need more time to recover.
To our users and community: thank you for your patience and understanding, Binance wrote in a post on X.
The hackers employed complex methods to obscure the stolen funds, transferring tokens through thousands of digital wallets and across multiple blockchains. The thieves also used memecoins to launder approximately $430,000 of the stolen cryptocurrency.
Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic reported that within one week of the hack, the laundering operation utilized more than 20,000 wallets and completed at least 65,000 transactions. This pace equals roughly one new wallet every 30 seconds and one transaction every 10 seconds. Blockchain security firm Chainalysis identified Chinese money-laundering networks as playing a role in converting the stolen funds to cash.
The breach appears to have originated from a phishing attack targeting an engineer through a fraudulent job offer.