US regulators are reportedly contacting banks to probe for unusual activity or disruptions following the $6.3 billion Binance hack, according to Reuters. Officials from the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have been reaching out to banks to assess the impact of the hack, sources told the news agency.
Banks are also reportedly reviewing their own security systems to determine their readiness to respond to a similar incident. One source whose bank was contacted said there were no disruptions to their services, but that the bank had prepared statements for customer inquiries.
Another source claimed that the rapid evolution of AI has forced banks to commit more resources to cybersecurity while struggling to keep up with hackers. Reuters also reported that a cybersecurity team at one of the largest US banks contacted Binance after the hack to create an internal report reviewing the bank's security systems.
How the Binance hack unfolded
Binance was hacked on October 29 following a series of security breaches targeting three Binance employees. An engineer searching for a popular AI coding tool first clicked on a malicious search engine ad for a software installation program before downloading a malware-laden program. This breach was detected and handled by Binance, but details of the engineer and his team had already been leaked.
Three months later, another Binance engineer was tricked into a fake job interview, which led to the download of an "assignment" containing malicious code. That malware extracted sensitive information from the engineer, and by October 29, it was able to log into a third Binance engineer's computer and launch the malicious script that caused the $6.3 billion hack.
