Do you use cryptocurrency exchange no matter what type? How aware are you of the vulnerabilities of those platforms? Most of the exchanges are vulnerable and our responsibility as a users is to be careful to protect our funds.

Nowadays, Binance is one of the world’s largest exchanges with over a billion dollars in daily trade volume( focuses on crypto-to-crypto trading) .The market is very tough,every hack causes severe reputational damage for exchange and causes loss of billions for users.

What Happened

Binance has been hacked, and there are rumors that the funds were stolen. Binance denied this information. People started to panic.

How the Hackers Worked

The hackers collected user account data for a long time. The earliest phishing attack has been in January. Close to Feb 22 phishing DDOs attacks became very intensive. Users accounts have been hacked,then created API’s and tried to move BTC by means of low liquidity VIA coins, using 31 hacked accounts.

During the investigation,it became clear that hackers used Unicode domains.Besides Binance hackers were using Unicode domains of other exchanges such as Poloniex, HitBTC, Gemini, Etherdelta, Coinone, Bittrex, and Bitstamp.Most of the domains were bought for the names of Sergey Kireev and Viktoria Belinskya. Binance published the domain list.

IP addresses are supposedly located around Lipetsk. Currently “Binance is offering a $250,000 USD equivalent bounty to anyone who supplies information that leads to the legal arrest of the hackers involved in the attempted hacking incident on Binance on March 7th, 2018.”

This is truly a noble and ethical thing to do. This is in order to send a clear message to those phishing and to show that they are not only taking precautionary action but being proactive, which is great to see.

Laying Down the Law in the Wild West: Fighting with Bows and Arrows

Binance set aside a $10 million US Dollars in order to deal with future attacks, schemes, and scams, etc. They even went a step further; they challenged other exchanges to do the same.

This sends a very clear, straight to the point message with an arrow aimed at the would be hackers, phishers, and scammers: “We are protecting our customers and laying down the law. No more tolerance!” For clarification purposes, this is not a quote, but the message they are sending.

Intriguing conclusions we can draw from this story

Exchanges are turning to be more secure: exchanges,centralized and decentralized are the main target for hackers.Now exchanges are undertaking more efforts to secure the platform and to find the hackers.

Beware: phishers are everywhere! Pay attention to any difference in the domain name,e-mail source , make sure to use the genuine domain (URL Spoof), don’t enable API if it was not required.Do not use engine referrals, factor authentication when available.There is a list of logs stolen on Binance website,always look for that information if using another exchange.

Use antivirus,check your computer is not infected.

Download the app,check addresses consistency between app and computer.If there is no consistency, reinstall your operating system.

Use two-factor authentication,secure your account!!

Exchanges are fighting back against hackers : Binance is striving to fight back against hackers and punish them.

However ,exchanges, as well as users, need to take all the security measures not to let this happen.