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Binance's account of the October 29th theft puts a company AI tool in the attack path. In June an engineer searching for a popular AI coding tool clicked an ad for a tampered copy of ; Binance caught it, but the attackers had learned who managed company wallets.
In September, fake recruiters on LinkedIn took a second engineer through two rounds of interviews and handed over a coding exercise carrying malware.
From that laptop the attackers used Binance's internal AI tool to take over the accounts of a wallet DevOps engineer and a wallet software engineer. Co-CEO Richard Teng told CNBC they "moved violently through our internal AI tools" to reach the system that authorized wallet transactions.
Binance has rebuilt the tool and has not explained how it was exploited. It says it has replenished 98% of the affected assets. Sources differ on what came back: Fortune reports about $2.5 billion recovered after Tether and Circle froze , and CNBC cites reports of about $3 billion frozen. An internal assistant that can act across staff accounts has an administrator's reach, and on Binance's account the attackers used it as one.
Binance says the North Korean hackers behind its $6.3 billion loss moved through its internal AI tools
Binance's account of the October 29th theft puts a company AI tool in the attack path. In June an engineer searching for a popular AI coding tool clicked an ad for a tampered copy of Homebrew; Binance caught it, but the attackers had learned who managed company wallets. In September, fake recruiters on LinkedIn took a second engineer through two rounds of interviews and handed over a coding exercise carrying malware. From that laptop the attackers used Binance's internal AI tool to take over the accounts of a wallet DevOps engineer and a wallet software engineer. Co-CEO Richard Teng told CNBC they "moved violently through our internal AI tools" to reach the system that authorized wallet transactions.
Binance has rebuilt the tool and has not explained how it was exploited. It says it has replenished 98% of the affected assets. Sources differ on what came back: Fortune reports about $2.5 billion recovered after Tether and Circle froze stablecoins, and CNBC cites reports of about $3 billion frozen. An internal assistant that can act across staff accounts has an administrator's reach, and on Binance's account the attackers used it as one. SourcesBB
Sources
- BBinance co-CEO Richard Teng says hackers used fake job interviews, AI tool to steal $6.3 billion in crypto (CNBC)cnbc.com
- BBinance hack details (Fortune)fortune.com
This story ran in the Afternoon Brief of November 3rd 2026.