Binance Hacked for $40M, CEO Backpedals on Recoup Via Block Reorganization

Chinese crypto exchange Binance suffered a major hack on Tuesday, which the company’s CEO responded to by proposing a rollback of the Bitcoin blockchain to rectify — a suggestion that riled up the community.The company formally notified the public via an announcement on the evening of May 7, 2019, claiming that the hackers had employed a diverse range of tactics from outright viruses to social engineering techniques such as phishing scams. In addition to gaining access to other sensitive information, Binance also admitted that a single transaction sapped 7,000 bitcoins from Binance’s wallet, roughly 2 percent of the company’s entire BTC holdings.“The hackers had the patience to wait, and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time. The transaction is structured in a way that passed our existing security checks. It was unfortunate that we were not able to block this withdrawal before it was executed. Once executed, the withdrawal triggered various alarms in our system. We stopped all withdrawals immediately after that,” the announcement reads.Binance will use reserves from its Secure Assets Fund for Users (SAFU fund) to compensate clients, noting “[n]o user funds will be affected.” Trading is continuing uninhibited, but Binance has suspended deposits and withdrawals for the time being.Later that same evening, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao insinuated that he was con...