- Musk said superintelligent AI agents could eventually exploit crypto exchanges for their own financial gain.
- Binance’s initial investigation pointed to a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, not an AI attack.
- Binance reported freezing almost $3B in assets and pledged to cover losses through SAFU and company funds.
Could an AI agent steal billions from an exchange? Elon Musk suggested so after the Binance hack. Reports point to a compromised laptop and North Korean hackers, not artificial intelligence.
Elon Musk Reacts
According to sources, wallets tied to Binance on Ethereum, Bitcoin, and TRON had seen outflows of $5.7 billion, including $1.45 billion in Bitcoin and $875 million in Ether. Musk wrote: “Everyday is Zeroday,” a reference to software flaws that attackers exploit before a fix exists.
Musk also responded to a viral post that claimed the attacker had dodged stablecoin freezes by depositing stolen USDT in Aave as collateral and borrowing ETH. Musk wrote that “super intelligence agents will at some point do this to gain currency for themselves, not a human.”
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What the Evidence Shows
Nothing reported so far ties artificial intelligence to the attack. Binance said its initial investigation points to a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, which let the attacker reach a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawals. Binance also said it found no evidence that wallet private keys had been leaked.
Meanwhile, TRM Labs attributed the attack to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group with high confidence, citing similarities to the group’s previous operations. Binance has not independently confirmed this attribution.
The response has focused on tracing and freezing the stolen assets. Binance reported that approximately $3 billion had been frozen on-chain and said it was working with blockchain intelligence firms, token issuers, and law enforcement agencies. Tether and Circle also froze funds linked to the incident.
Binance’s Position
Binance halted deposits and withdrawals, and co-CEO Yi He said it will cover all hacking losses with its SAFU fund, which holds roughly $1 billion in bitcoin, and company money.
While Binance’s recovery efforts focus on containing the financial damage, the available evidence still points to compromised internal access and a suspected North Korean-linked operation. Musk’s comments raise questions about the future risks of autonomous AI agents, but there is no evidence that one was involved in this attack.
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Related: Who’s Behind the $6.3B Binance Hack? Chainalysis, ZachXBT Point to North Korea
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