How Binance Helped Huobi Repel Hackers
Investments in cryptocurrencies are growing, and so are hacking incidents. This has discouraged a significant portion of the population from investing in cryptocurrency ventures, and the con artists have persisted throughout. I wrote about some of the biggest crypto hacks in recent history, and my research inspired me to pose an urgent query. Are crypto exchanges making every effort to protect our money from hackers? The events of last year have amply demonstrated that security needs to be a key priority for all fintech companies, but what steps are they taking to reassure their users of their effectiveness in resolving security breaches?
Just this morning, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, revealed on Twitter that Huobi had experienced a security compromise. He claimed that the hacker had previously attempted to hack Binance, but his accounts had been frozen. This time, the security team at Binance worked with Huobi to get rid of the viper and was successful in recovering 124 Bitcoins. According to the crypto tycoon, the Harmony One hacker was behind this attack. Here is his full tweet:
“We detected Harmony One hacker fund movement. They previously tried to launder through Binance and we froze his accounts. This time he used Huobi. We assisted Huobi team to freeze his accounts. Together, 124 BTC have been recovered. CeFi helping to keep DeFi
#SAFU!”
This occurred the very next day after the CEO of Binance revealed that his exchange spends more than $10 million a month on security measures. He remarked, and I quote:
“@binance spend more than $10m per month on SMS alone. Security is not cheap”
It appears that the exchange, who is perhaps the most powerful in the industry, is highly concerned about the protection of its customers’ money. This is not surprising given that Binance was only recently compromised in October of last year, losing an enormous $570 million. According to Investopedia, hackers exploited a cross-chain bridge called BSC Token Hub, causing the creation of excess Binance Coins (BNB) and the withdrawal of 2 million BNB tokens. Although it is unclear when the exchange began spending that much money exclusively on SMS, it appears that the Huobi and Binance security teams work well together to thwart hackers. In response to CZ’s tweet of the incident on Huobi, a twitter user by name CryptoAlerts365 asked,
“Does Binance share information like exploits and hacks in real time with all other exchanges?”
To this CZ replied,
“Our security teams talk to each other, not all exchanges are collaborative (some have a wrong competitive mindset), but many are. I am actually not in those chats myself. Don’t know the details”
Another user by name @Mangyek0 asked,
“Hey CZ when was this?”
He replied promptly,
“Was just informed by our security team this morning”
Though Huobi has not yet issued an official comment, cryptocurrency aficionados have had varying reactions to the announcement of the alliance.
@mahhhlik tweeted, “Not all super hero’s wear capes. But they do use @binance”
Another user Linda Sunshine tweeted, “Huobi $pGala reflects how Huobi cares about investors funds instead of peg it 1:1 to gala they have done nothing”
Let’s take a seat and see how the upcoming events develop. Continue purchasing cryptocurrencies till then, but be careful to stay safe!
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I write lots of other articles on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology on my Medium. You can also find me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
