Crypto and blockchain not as safe as you thought? Binance hack is a reality check

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin were said to be super secure and virtually unhackable. But Binance just got breached, risking $6.3 billion worth of assets. This raises the question, is crypto really secure?

In Short

• Binance hack raises alarm bells over cryptocurrency
• One laptop led to $6.3 billion in losses
• Expert says crypto remains secure but human error is a factor

When Satoshi Nakamoto launched the Bitcoin network, he called it a “beta community.” It was never claimed to be bullet-proof to hacking. Nakamoto would infact hint at the possibility that visible cracks might start to appear in the network if it grew too fast or drew unwanted attention. But over the years, as more people got invested in the idea of “decentralised” currency free from the shackles of the real world—think banks, governments et al—people started to believe that it was virtually not hackable, to a point that it became a legend much like the origins of its creator.

If there was ever any doubt before, the recent Binance hack and the chain of events that have—invariably—lead to it, prove conclusively that crypto is not as secure as you once thought. To be fair, Bitcoin is also more secure than we perhaps give it credit for.

Crypto is a digital currency that does not rely on any government or bank. Rather, it is decentralised and managed on a digital ledger known as a blockchain which is maintained by millions of anonymous users. This is also what makes it theoretically more secure than say real currency. Even if a hacker compromises one system, the blockchain would have a million more to verify, know that something was wrong and take action to minimise impact.

The world, much to Nakamoto’s fear, took notice. By 2021, there was a cryptocurrency boom. El Salvador even sanctioned Bitcoin as legal tender, which means that no one could deny Bitcoin as a mode of payment.

The Binance reality check

On October 29, 2026, Binance was compromised. Binance is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume. The breach was the largest of its kind, with digital assets worth $6.3 billion stolen in roughly about twenty minutes. Binance said it would compensate the losses from their SAFU which is short for Secure Asset Fund for Users. At the time of writing, all Binance systems are back online after the exchange briefly halted all deposits and withdrawals for security reasons and took remedial action.

In a security update, Binance informed the breach was linked to a compromised laptop of a DevOps engineer at the company. Soon after it was found that there were some additional points involved as well, critical enough to grab the attention of the United States of America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Though Binance was founded in China, the company had to move its operations out, after the Chinese government’s strict crackdown on cryptocurrency.

The FBI has linked the Binance hack to the North Korean state-sponsored hacking unit called TraderTraitor, also known as Lazarus. Notably, the same hacker group was behind the Bybit cyberattack from 2025 wherein crypto assets worth $1.5 billion were stolen.

The Binance hack is a reality check when it comes to the security aspect of cryptocurrency. Anirban Mukherji, the CEO of cybersecurity firm miniOrange, says that the breach highlights areas where crypto can be vulnerable. “Security is only as strong as the entire system protecting the assets,” he tells India Today Tech. “Blockchain technology may provide strong cryptographic guarantees, but exchanges, wallets, private keys, user devices, and supporting infrastructure can still be vulnerable.”

Govind Rammurthy, CEO of eScan, adds that the incident happened after the hacker used the laptop to make transfers, without actually breaking any encryption. “That single entry-point, an open door, was enough for the attacker to authorise fraudulent transfers and move funds across ten different blockchains in about twenty minutes,” Rammurthy tells India Today Tech. “Binance has said its actual wallet keys were not broken.”

This, he says, makes the incident bizarre. “So, the headline figure is enormous, yet the root-cause is almost boring & mundane!!! Just one infected computer belonging to the right person,” Govind Rammurthy explains. “It is a reminder that the scale of a crypto loss has little to do with the sophistication of the break-in.”

Is your crypto secure?

Experts do agree that the blockchain remains secure despite this incident. Thanks to highly secure ledgers and security mechanisms. But the lapses may happen in the ecosystem. “For example, a blockchain may operate exactly as designed while an attacker compromises a user’s private key and transfers their assets,” Anirban Mukherji says. “The technology itself may not have been broken, but the assets are still lost.”

Once a hacker does get access to a compromised system, it becomes quite easy to transfer funds thanks to the nature of the blockchain – irreversible and almost instant transactions. This, Govind Rammurthy says, is what hackers try to do instead of breaching security protocols. “Crypto is best described as cryptographically strong but operationally weak and fragile. Attackers have long stopped trying to beat the maths. They simply target the weakest human or system around it,” he notes.

The same happened in the case of Binance. The hacker reportedly did not break any encryption or tamper with the blockchain. Rather, it also began with a compromised laptop. This means that the blockchain itself still remains quite secure even when AI tools have become more accessible.

Govind Rammurthy notes that even with more advanced AI models, the blockchain is still secure. “AI cannot break the encryption that protects the blockchain; that remains well beyond the reach of today’s artificial intelligence and even conventional supercomputers,” he says. But what AI can do is find weaknesses – like the compromised laptop – quicker. “AI makes the job of fooling people and finding weak points faster, cheaper and more scalable than ever before,” Rammurthy adds.

We are human after all

Throughout the Binance incident, one thing sticks out and that is the compromised laptop. This ultimately can be attributed to human error. Despite having some of the strongest security measures, one mistake may have led to the loss of billions. “Technology can be sophisticated, but security decisions are ultimately implemented and managed by people,” Anirban Mukherji says. “A stolen laptop, an exposed credential, an overlooked software vulnerability, or an incorrectly configured access policy can undermine otherwise strong security measures.”

And this has been the trend for other cases too. Last year, Bybit, another crypto exchange, lost $1.5 billion, after Lazarus compromised a laptop of a third-party wallet developer. In 2022, the same hacker group lured a developer with a fake job offer and ended up stealing $540 million worth of crypto from the blockchain-based game Axie Infinity.

Govind Rammurthy notes that this pattern remains the same across the industry. Blockchain remains secure, but it's the ecosystem that can be exploited. “The technology does its job of securing the ledger extremely well. The vulnerability is almost always the surrounding layer that humans build and operate,” he notes. “Until exchanges treat the security of their own people, laptops and internal processes as seriously as they treat cryptography, these incidents unfortunately will keep happening.”

- Ends