Digital currency exchange Binance is reportedly assisting in investigating a recent attack carried out against Turkish crypto exchange BtcTurk, with more than $5 million in pilfered funds now having been frozen. This, according to social media update from Binance CEO Richard Teng.
Teng noted that Binance is “assisting BtcTurk with investigations and have frozen over $5.3M in stolen funds so far.”
As noted on its official website, BtcTurk revealed that the malicious attack mainly impacted digital asset holdings maintaend in hot wallets. These are basically software-powered cryptocurrency wallets that stay connected to the Internet.
While hot wallets tend to be more convenient for frequent crypto transactions, they are also a lot more prone to bad actors / hackers when compared to crypto held in offline / cold storage mediums.
BtcTurk noted on June 22 (roughly translated):
“Only a portion of the balances of 10 cryptocurrencies in our hot wallets were affected by this cyber attack, while the majority of assets held in our cold wallets remain secure.”
The crypto exchange claims more than 5 million users.
Notably, Teng revealed via X that Binance plans to release updates after its investigations unit has additional details regarding the issue.
Teng shared:
“Our investigations & security teams work around the clock as part of our proactive efforts to protect the ecosystem from bad actors. We will provide further updates as relevant.”
This development comes after ZackXBT acknowledged that Binance has done a lot when it comes to assisting the crypto community during security breaches and damaging hacks.
ZachXBT noted via X:
“Binance gets crucified by the media when in reality their security team generally does more for victims + goes out of their way to assist in incident response,”
This recent hack comes shortly following Swiss crypto exchange Lykke suspending withdrawals after being hit with an exploit on June 4, 2024.
Security researcher SomaXBT said that the team had tried to conceal the impact of the security breach, adding that “@lykke CTX got exploited and lost $19.5 million worth crypto assets but the team is still trying to hide this fact.”
