Recent reports by CNBC indicate a group of hackers successfully stole a total of 7,000 bitcoin from one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange sites, Binance. The latter is estimated to translate into over $40 million US dollars. The digital heist, as described by Binance, occurred this past Tuesday and is considered to be a "large scale security breach." Furthermore, the attack is said to have been orchestrated using an array of strategies which managed to steal the user information of several members as well as their login authentication codes. Binance shares that the total sum was traced back to a single digital wallet.
A statement was released, discussing the issue further, noticing the hacker's "patience to wait" in order to "execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time." Accordingly, the successful theft is said to have affected a total of 2% of Binance's current Bitcoin stocks, which were recoverable via their "hot wallet." A "hot wallet" consist of digital currency stores online, whereas "cold wallet" stores funds offline.
For the moment, Binance withheld all deposits and withdrawals but continues to allow trading. The company further assures no user funds will be intended as they plan on recovering the loss in full. The site's founder, Changpeng Zhao, shared "Right now, our main effort is to focus on rebuilding and recovering the system. We need to make sure that we completely eradicate any trace of the hackers in all of our accounts, in all of our data."