Richard Teng, CEO of crypto trade Binance, disclosed on Feb. 2 by way of a submit on the social media platform X that the trade acted swiftly to freeze the Ripple exploiter’s tackle following a considerable hack concentrating on the private pockets of Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen.
Teng expressed gratitude in the direction of the Ripple crew and the blockchain analyst ZachXBT for his or her environment friendly collaboration and help in addressing the theft.
Opposite to preliminary hypothesis suggesting a compromise of Ripple’s community or the XRP token itself, Larsen clarified that it was his private accounts that have been breached, not the infrastructure of Ripple. He famous that the stolen funds have been being laundered by at the least six completely different exchanges, together with MEXC, Gate, Binance, Kraken, OKX, HTX, and HitBTC.
The confusion across the hack was partly because of the misattribution of the affected account as Ripple itself in XRP block explorers XRPScan and Bithomp, as revealed by ZachXBT. This misattribution led to preliminary misunderstandings concerning the character and goal of the hack.
Larsen has since been in communication with numerous cryptocurrency exchanges to freeze the exploiter’s tackle and has concerned legislation enforcement within the investigation.
Regardless of the subtle nature of the assault, the hacker didn’t make use of crypto mixer services or decentralized exchanges to obscure their identification, a tactic that has lately fallen out of favor amongst cybercriminals to keep away from detection and fund freezing by centralized exchanges.
Whereas Binance has efficiently frozen a portion of the stolen property, the involvement of different exchanges, reminiscent of OKX and Kraken, in figuring out or freezing associated funds stays undisclosed.
This current intervention by Binance to freeze property linked to the Ripple hack is a part of a seamless pattern the place the trade has stepped in to mitigate the consequences of cyber thefts throughout the cryptocurrency sector. For example, in February of 2023, Binance performed a pivotal function in aiding Norwegian authorities to safe the return of $6 million stolen within the Ronin network heist.
Furthermore, Binance’s collaborative efforts prolong past solo initiatives. Final yr, the trade collaborated with Huobi to facilitate the recovery of $1.4 million in crypto that had been stolen from Concord’s Horizon Bridge. In the same vein, Binance was additionally instrumental in reclaiming $5.8 million for Axie Infinity after the Ronin Community was compromised and the stolen property have been moved by its platform.