Binance Clients Face Unfortunate Episode with $27M Theft and Unsuccessful $13M Attempted Extortion

By: Eliza Bennet

In a couple of unsettling incidents, clients of the crypto trading platform Binance became targets of significant thefts, one of which met with substantial success while the other was thwarted at a later stage. According to on-chain analyst reports, the successful thief managed to pilfer $27 million worth of Tether (USDT), a popular stablecoin. This felonious transaction was linked back to a victim's account associated with the Binance deployer, a technical facet responsible for the platform's smart contract creation.

Early indications did point toward a potential compromise of Binance's internal contracts, however, official communication from a Binance spokesperson revealed that it was the user's independently managed DeFi wallet receiving the withdrawal that had been compromised. Binance's internal security mechanisms are probing the situation though the actual transfer process in question does fall out of their immediate purview.

In a tangential theft attempt, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao informed his audience about an extortion attempt targeted at unidentified individuals, involving separate theft amounting to approximately $12.5 million. The modus operandi of the perpetrators involved luring the victims on a faux business trip in Montenegro, who were then coerced into emptying their wallets. Step-in help from Binance's partners allowed for freezing about $11.8 million of the stolen amount.

Though both incidents center around illicit transfers of sizeable USDT sums and Binance clientele, it remains unclear whether the two attacks hold any correlation beyond these similarities.