As the exchange informed, deposits and withdrawals are already enabled. Users must now comply with a list of 14 precautions to protect their accounts
Binance left its $40 million hack behind it. After suffering an attack earlier this month and losing 7,000 bitcoins due to a hack, the exchange house Binance confirmed that it completed a major update to its system and that it relaunched its trading platform at 13:00 UTC this May 15th.
A group of hackers eluded the security controls of the exchange and withdraw from the accounts of some users 7.000 bitcoins (BTC), the equivalent to USD 40.7 million. According to the company’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, the theft was caused by a coordinated attack, which took advantage of a “large-scale” vulnerability to access the system through API keys, two-factor authentication codes, and other data types.
The flaw seems to be resolved for the time being and the exchange company took new measures to protect its users. After the attack that stopped the habitual withdrawals, Binance announced an “important” update to its system.
According to the latest communication from the development team of the exchange, deposits and the exchange process will be available first, and then the operations will be resumed, enabling withdrawals again.
The work was completed as scheduled. Binance relaunched all of its commercial services, including deposits and withdrawals for all its users. “Binance has completed its system update and we will resume all commercial activity. From now until the start of trading, users can cancel open orders, process deposits and use other functions related to the account. The withdrawal function will be available shortly after resuming operations”, says part of the statement.
After the attack, the developers of the platform decided to stop the operations to deploy a massive update of the system. The rest of the details about this update are not known. Zhao posted several tweets about the update process to confirm the relaunch.
The attack against Binance surprised the crypto community. In response to this, the exchange office admitted its responsibility, last Tuesday, and urged users to read and comply with a list of 14 security precautions to protect their funds in the exchange.
As a form of compensation for users who cannot use their accounts as usual, Binance also announced a gift scheme that involves their internal token, the Binance currency (BNB).
During a promotional period scheduled until May 18th, users who exchange more than 1 BTC of funds will share a prize of 50,000 BNB (equivalent to USD 1.26 million), which will be accredited two weeks later.
Another plan is that the exchange will allow users who have a Binance “VIP level” to participate in a free promotion to enjoy the VIP level above their current phase, which will be obtained depending on the standard trade volume and the calculation of BNB funds.
The Cryptopia exchange, which lost around USD 17 million in January, also stopped trading this week when its executives called the liquidators.
Cryptopia, a New Zealand cryptocurrency exchange, also suffered a serious hack in January. This robbery caused the suspension of its operations and the liquidation of the exchange, according to a statement published on its official website.
Whilst these platforms suffered violations in their security systems, the security measures of different exchanges are reinforced to avoid having new failures and losing the reliability of their users.
By María Rodríguez
