New Delhi [India], October 30 : Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has estimated the financial impact of its security breach at around USD 6.3 billion, significantly higher than the nearly USD 3 billion in assets frozen so far, while its initial investigation points to a possible compromise of a DevOps engineer's laptop.
In a security incident update published on Friday, Binance said the compromised laptop may have allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions.
The company, however, said it had found no evidence of any wallet private key leak.
"Binance's initial investigation suggests that the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions," the update said.
The exchange added that the findings were preliminary and that it would share a detailed technical post-mortem after the investigation was complete and the facts were fully verified.
Binance said it had worked with blockchain partners to freeze around USD 3 billion worth of affected assets on-chain so far, while the estimated total impact stood at approximately USD 6.3 billion.
The company reiterated that users would not bear the losses arising from the incident, saying it would use its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and company funds to cover the entire amount.
"Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and the company's funds. User funds are safe," it said.
As part of its immediate response, the exchange temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while completing security checks, revoked the affected address authorisation and engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover the funds.
The company also said it would publish an updated Proof of Reserves once the remediation process was complete.
Binance said its teams were working with law enforcement agencies to establish the identity of those responsible and recover the affected assets.
The latest update follows Binance's earlier announcement that it had frozen around USD 3 billion in assets linked to the incident, with the figure rising from an initial verified USD 2.54 billion. The exchange had suspended deposits and withdrawals and temporarily halted trading on its Binance Alpha platform as a precaution.
Tether and Circle also froze related assets worth more than USD 1.567 billion and USD 800 million, respectively, while Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao said, "It does look like a hack on Binance."
The exchange said it would continue sharing verified updates through its official channels as the investigation progresses.