Incident Overview
Binance's hot wallet was hacked, leading to a loss of 7,074 bitcoins (BTC) worth nearly $42.8 million.
The breach resulted in about 7,074 bitcoins (BTC) — worth nearly $42.8 million — being stolen from the exchange’s hot wallet. The transaction had 44 outputs, 21 of which were native Segregated Witness addresses, and those addresses received 99.97% of the funds. The funds from those 44 addresses have since been moved to seven addresses, six of which hold 1,060.6 BTC, while one holds 707.1 BTC.
The transaction behind the attack:
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/e8b406091959700dbffcff30a60b190133721e5c39e89bb5fe23c5a554ab05ea
Further movements of the stolen funds:
https://twitter.com/Coinfirm_io/status/1126116760732749824
Incident Report
Protocol Information
What the Attacker Needed to Succeed
Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Binance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (May 2019).
- Verify all logic paths related to Access Control are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control Attacks attack class for patterns
- Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs
Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.
Free TrialSecurity Audit History
- Audit Report 1 Report
Related Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next Binance
The Binance hack is one of many attacks that skilled auditors are trained to detect before deployment. Master real exploit patterns and defense techniques with hands-on Web3 security training.