Binance Exchange "Hacked" - Check Your Altcoin Balance ASAP!

In one of the odder exchange "hacks" to have been made public, the Binance cryptocurrency exchange appears was reported to have been hacked yesterday. Many users alt coins were liquidated at market, with some having their Bitcoin withdrawn and others having it used, oddly enough, to pump an obscure coin named VIA.

Initial suspicions were that only users using trading bots had been targeted, given only a small slice of customers seemed to be affected. This seemed plausible at first but was quickly proven inaccurate. The mobile app (Android/iPhone) was next up on the scapegoat list, but didn't seem to be the problem either.

Most hacks don't result in the pump of an alt-coin by 1000% (was higher on Binance).

Binance's CEO has since cleared up many of the details on Twitter. It appears users were fished in a very clever scheme. The website looked almost exactly like Binance owing to using some special characters that can barely be distinguished from the standard characters - think "umlauts." On top of that, once you signed in once through the portal and leaked your credentials, you were redirected correctly to Binance.com and would always be redirected in the future, even if you logged out. This reduced the chances that anyone would notice the future theft "in progress."

Once the attackers felt they had enough data compromised, they sprung the trap and attempted to cash out. We now know this was yesterday. However, this means this was not an exchange hack but simply a security incursion on the client side.

Remember - don't google or type in exchange addresses. Use bookmarks! They substantially reduce the chances of this happening to you.

There is good news if you were affected - Binance has reportedly already been able to quarantine and reverse the transactions, so nobody will actually incur any losses (save perhaps Binance itself) from this event. (Note: Reports of Binance is offering free crypto bonuses to customers on Twitter are probably a scam.)

Make sure you check your exchange account, so you can notify support and maximize your recovery chances if you have lost any funds. Check specifically your order history and withdrawal history.

IF "seems to good to be true" THEN "probably is too good to be true."

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Sources: Google, Reddit, Twitter, Binance
Copyright: Binance, CoinMarketCap