Binance says a fake job interview and an internal AI tool led attackers to its wallet signing service
Binance's initial findings trace the $6.34 billion theft to a September fake recruiter whose coding assignment infected an engineer's Mac. An internal AI tool let the attacker reach two wallet engineers, and a container deployment token on one laptop opened the signing service.
Binance published initial findings on November 3 for the October 29 theft of about $6.34 billion. In September a software engineer was approached on a job-hunting platform by a fake recruiter, and a second-round coding "assignment" carried malware that replaced a legitimate pyenv component and evaded endpoint tools. On October 20 the attacker used that computer and an internal AI tool to take control of two engineers on the wallet infrastructure team, and found a container deployment permission token on one of their machines. On October 29 the attacker logged into the third engineer's computer, used the second engineer's credentials to deploy a container, and ran a script that reached the wallet signing service. It also abused EIP-7702 delegations, which kept working after withdrawals were suspended. About $2.85 billion has been frozen or intercepted.
Why it matters
Our first post quoted Binance saying the attacker "did not simply use one engineer's permissions." The chain explains it: three engineers' machines, one standing deployment token on a laptop, and an internal AI tool that let one compromised machine reach others. Binance also says a Wallet DevOps engineer installed a tampered Homebrew package in June; it replaced the device and rotated credentials, but the team's roles remained exposed. Rotation does not undo an attacker learning whom to target next.
Keep deployment tokens for signing systems off engineer laptops, issue them just in time, and require a second approver for deploys that touch signing. Treat internal AI tools that can act across machines as privileged access. The FBI has attributed the theft to North Korea's TraderTraitor. More cases are in our breach incident database.
Source: Binance
Related on Start with Identity
- BlogMicrosoft: fake Teams help desk calls led to AD CS certificates for privileged accounts and a domain controller
Microsoft investigated two intrusions that began with attackers posing as IT support on Teams and ended with Active Directory Certificate Services abuse. ESC1 y
- BlogDexcom says targeted vishing calls led to access to internal documents
Glucose monitor maker Dexcom says targeted voice phishing gave an unauthorized party access to limited information in certain internal documents. It reports no
- BlogWorkOS says an AI-assisted attack framework reached its internal sales tool and CRM data
WorkOS found unauthorized access on October 30 to an internal tool its sales and customer teams use, exposing CRM contacts, call and Slack excerpts, and directo
- ReportIdentity Breach Report 2026: how attackers get in
123 identity breaches, 2021 to 2026: MFA was bypassed in 25 of the 41 with a known MFA status, and 44% of 2025-2026 cases had no login for MFA to protect.
- CVEJFrog Artifactory hands its internal anonymous-user token to unauthenticated callers
Self-hosted Artifactory could return an internal anonymous-user token to an unauthenticated request even with anonymous access disabled. Attackers chained it wi
- CVECheck Point Remote Access VPN lets attackers in without a password over IKEv1
A certificate validation logic flaw in Check Point Remote Access and Mobile Access over deprecated IKEv1 let attackers open a VPN session without a valid passwo