These hackers just pulled off history's biggest heist. Here's what you need to do now.

In a historically bad month for cybersecurity, Black October ended with a grand finale of epic proportions. Friday brought the biggest cryptocurrency heist in history, with hackers stealing billions of dollars from a major crypto platform. Here’s what happened, what changed over the weekend, and what you need to do if you were affected.

Late afternoon on Friday, October 30, the largest cryptocurrency platform in the world, Binance, was breached by hackers. In about 20 minutes, the attackers reportedly stole $6.34 billion directly from users’ accounts, marking the biggest crypto heist in history.

This story serves as a warning that anyone — even an employee at a leading cryptocurrency company — is subject to phishing scams.

TRM Labs, an AI and blockchain criminal investigation agency, quickly linked the attack to a North Korean hacking group called TraderTraitor. According to the FBI, this same group was responsible for the Bybit attack in 2025, in which the group stole $1.5 billion in Ethereum, and the Ronin Network heist, in which the group took $620 million in 2022.

Needless to say, this group has a long track record of cryptocurrency theft, and despite the specter of Black October looming over the internet, there’s no indication that TraderTraitor used a PHP exploit to gain access to Binance’s systems. In fact, according to the company, the attack may have started with a compromised laptop that belonged to one of its engineers. As a result, the attack appears to be the product of a good old-fashioned phishing scheme, where the employee was tricked into clicking a malicious link that installed malware on the device, giving hackers access to Binance’s trading systems.

Binance temporarily disabled cryptocurrency withdrawals to prevent further losses, as well as deposits for safe measure. The company worked quickly to mitigate the damage. By Saturday, Binance claimed that 90% of all lost assets were returned to users’ accounts, and by Sunday, withdrawals for specific crypto coins began to go back online, with a gradual rollout continuing into Monday.

RELATED: Time to declare independence from phishing scams — here's how

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If you’re a Binance user, you’re advised to check your account for signs of losses. Even if you don’t believe you were affected — or if you’re unsure if you were affected — it's a good idea to check anyway. The breach targeted Binance’s internal systems, so customer usernames, passwords, and seed phrases were rendered ineffective at securing user accounts from the hacking group. Your account may have been compromised without you even knowing it.

If you did lose money, don't worry. Binance promised to restore all lost funds automatically. You don’t need to file a claim or submit a form to report the damages. However, it may be a good idea to watch your account over the coming weeks to ensure that every missing coin is returned as expected. If, after Binance has finished restoring the final 10% of lost assets to users, you believe that money is still missing, you can contact its support team for help.

This story serves as a warning that anyone — even an employee at a leading cryptocurrency company — is subject to phishing scams. That is why it is important to stay wary of any unsolicited communications you receive in your email inbox, messaging apps, and even phone calls, especially if they tell you to click on random links that could hide malicious intent. Even if the message comes from a trusted friend, family member, or colleague, it is a good idea to check with them personally before clicking on a link that appears suspicious.

Some web browsers now even have anti-phishing and malicious link protection built in. Enhanced protection mode in Google Chrome is free, and it uses AI to identify dangerous websites in real time. It will even stop you from visiting that site if the threat on the other side is a verified danger to you and your devices. Follow these steps to enable it now.

The Binance breach was just one of two major financial platform hacks that happened on Friday. Polymarket was also attacked, though on a much smaller scale. Just a little more than 700 users lost $2.7 million to bad actors, thanks to a vulnerability in a third-party system. The issue was quickly resolved, and trades are all back online.

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