Binance Accounts "Hacked", Officials Claim Trades Reversed No Harm Done

Summary

On March 7th, the VIA/BTC market on Binance experienced abnormal trading activity. VIA (Viacoin)'s price on the exchange surged and withdrawals on the exchange were suspended.

Events

Apparently, hackers slowly collected compromised accounts via phishing attacks (fake websites designed to steal user account information) and generated API keys for all compromised accounts.

API keys can be used to initiate transactions on the exchange using an off-exchange program.

In this instance, they used a program that was designed to sell all their currencies to buy BTC, then using that BTC to buy VIA at high prices. Meanwhile, hackers intended to sell their own VIA coins after the price bump (for BTC).

However, when the hackers tried to withdraw the BTC, they discovered Binance had already suspended all withdrawals.

Results

Based on an investigation by Binance, all abnormal trades identified by the company executed in VIA/BTC are to be reversed and the hacker's original VIA will be donated to charity according to the Tweet below.

Binance has reversed all irregular trades. All deposit, trading and withdrawal are resumed. will write a more detailed account of what happened shortly. Interestingly, the hackers lost coins during this attempt. We will donate this to Binance Charity.

— CZ (not giving crypto away) (@cz_binance) March 7, 2018

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