The largest crypto theft on record started with one laptop.
What we know
Binance says attackers got into a DevOps engineer’s laptop, reached a service container and submitted unauthorized withdrawals. It hasn’t found a leaked wallet private key. Co-CEO Richard Teng said it “was not a single ‘one-click’ action” and that the company found “additional points of breach.” TRM says about $6.36 billion moved out across ten blockchains, mostly in about 20 minutes on Oct 29, roughly four times the 2025 Bybit hack. TRM and Chainalysis both attribute it to North Korea’s TraderTraitor (Lazarus). About $2.7 billion was frozen. Binance says it will cover all losses from its SAFU fund and company money, and it has paused deposits and withdrawals.
My take
Blast radius matters. A single admin workstation shouldn’t be able to reach systems that move money without more checks. Separate admin machines, hardware keys and multi-person approvals are boring, and they exist for days like this.
God Bless, and May the Source Be with You!
