coindesk.com
An attacker who compromises a crypto exchange’s withdrawal controls can move billions of dollars in minutes, leaving investigators chasing funds that may be impossible to recover. Binance’s $6.3 billion theft has renewed debate over the safeguards exchanges need to prevent a security breach from becoming a financial catastrophe.
That difference is at the center of a debate over whether cryptocurrencies are more vulnerable to attacks than banks and other traditional financial institutions, following Thursday’s $6.3 billion attack on Binance, the largest reported cryptocurrency theft to date.
Banks also get hacked. A 2024 International Monetary Fund (IMF) report banks were the most frequent targets of cyberattacks within the financial sector. Financial firms accounted for nearly 20% of reported cyber incidents across industries, with almost $12 billion in reported direct losses between 2004 and 2023.
But those figures measure reported cyber losses, not every dollar stolen through banking fraud and cannot establish whether banks or crypto exchanges are hacked more frequently.
Tomer Sharoni, CEO of Israeli blockchain intelligence firm Addressable, the difference lies less in how hackers gain access than in what they can steal once inside.
“A bank employee’s laptop can be compromised exactly the same way as an exchange employee’s laptop,” Sharoni told CoinDesk. “The phishing email, the malicious download and the fake job interview are all the same. The difference is what the attacker gets at the end.”
Banks have several opportunities to catch or stop fraudulent transfers, from compliance checks to checks by banks processing the payments. Some transfers can even be recalled after they are sent. With crypto, confirmed blockchain transactions generally cannot be reversed, though issuers can freeze some stolen tokens, potentially limiting an attacker’s ability to cash out.
That makes exchanges particularly attractive targets, Sharoni said: “Speed, finality and irreversibility make large crypto treasuries the most valuable targets in finance.”
Sharoni added that crypto firms are attacked more often because hackers stand to gain more from a successful breach.
Debating security
Abdul Rafay Gadit, co-founder of ZIG Finance, made comments that are opposite to Sharoni's assessment that crypto firms are attacked more often.
“Crypto doesn’t get hacked more than banks. It just can’t hide it, and it can’t undo it,” Gadit told CoinDesk. “Banks get breached constantly, but most incidents are handled quietly and surface later, if at all. A crypto hack shows up on a block explorer within minutes, so it feels more frequent.”
