Bitcoin scammers are “on overdrive” following the $6.3 billion (£4.7bn) hack of Binance, the crypto exchange’s founder has warned.
Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, shared screenshots of fake offers of compensation to Binance customers affected by suspended withdrawals in the wake of the record-breaking incident last week.
“Scammers on overdrive now,” CZ wrote in a post to X. “Be careful.”
Security experts said that cyber criminals will be looking to exploit consumer panic by impersonating Binance representatives through fake security alerts and requests to transfer funds into “safe” crypto wallets.
Even those whose accounts are completely unaffected could become targets, with cryptocurrency owners urged to check for updates directly through the exchange's official app or website.
“With billions of dollars reportedly affected, people will understandably be worried about their investments. Scammers know this and could use the headlines to make fraudulent messages appear more convincing,” Justas Pukys, a senior product manager at the cyber security firm Surfshark, told The Independent.
“A warning that your savings are about to disappear can be enough to make someone act before questioning whether the message is genuine.”
Following the breach last Thursday, Binance stopped customers withdrawing their funds to protect remaining assets and investigate the cyber attack.
Within hours of reopening on Sunday, Binance customers withdrew $4.6bn, though the outflows have since stabilised to normal levels.
The world’s largest crypto exchange stated that it would use its corporate reserves to replace the stolen customer assets, which included bitcoin, ethereum and several other cryptocurrencies.
Binance said that it has already covered 95 per cent of the funds stolen in the hack, which the FBI has attributed to North Korea.
The US law enforcement agency said it had observed members of a state-sponsored unit known as TraderTraitor converting stolen assets into ethereum (ETH).
“It is expected these assets will then be further laundered by converting them using DeFi and instant swap services as they prepare them for further laundering stages,” the FBI said in a note on Friday.
Recovering stolen cryptocurrency is notoriously difficult due to the decentralised nature of digital currency.
Following a similar hack of Bybit last year, which saw TraderTraitor steal around $1.5bn in cryptocurrency, the crypto exchange was only able to retrieve less than 5 per cent of the lost funds.
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