On October 29, the news hit: In one of the largest thefts in internet history, over $6 billion was stolen from Binance, the biggest crypto exchange in the world.

At Yahoo! Finance, Harsh Notariya reports, “The attacker never stole Binance’s private keys. Instead, they made Binance’s own systems approve the theft.”

He follows the heist in detail and the details are complex.

But this part isn’t complex at all: “The attacker breached a DevOps engineer’s laptop, then used a service container (a packaged program running inside Binance’s systems) to submit fake withdrawal orders.”

Binance is dealing with the fallout but many questions remain — notably whether our ordinary banks are safe from this type of heist. There the news is not good.

The hackers relied on developing a relationship, not a technology

The hackers — whom the FBI thinks are from North Korea — relied on bogus job interviews, according to
Natalie Musumeci at Business Insider. Apparently, the engineer employee had been approached by a fake headhunting firm:

The Binance engineer completed a video interview with the fake HR rep, who shared a social media account with the employee filled with personal photos and videos “in order to build trust,” the company said.

During the second interview, which was conducted in a “popular social chat app,” Binance said the engineer was instructed to download an “assignment” that contained a “malicious code repository onto his work computer.” (November 3, 2026)

Readers can guess the rest, starting with: The hackers got inside the system. The rest is details.

Could it happen to our everyday banks?

At The Conversation, cybersecurity expert Bogdan Księżopolski says yes, it could:

The largest cryptocurrency theft in history is essentially a story about how people and processes are the weakest links in security systems. Cryptography was not compromised and remains a key security measure. Unfortunately, these same vulnerabilities exist in banks, payment companies and hospitals and attackers are well aware of them. (November 5, 2026)

Specifically, he says, such attacks often involve fake recruiters or planted contractors or employees:

Visual identities during online interviews can be falsified using deepfakes. Video interviews and CVs no longer prove who someone really is. In some cases, actors are even hired for in-person interviews. Today, we need to focus on strengthening the identity verification process. It’s important to check candidates through independently verified contacts during this process. (November 5, 2026)

The criminals target vulnerable employees, building trust (as in this case), and are just waiting for the right vulnerability at the right moment. That moment is much more likely to occur in systems that do not have multiple built-in cyberchecks for unusual transactions.

Any financial institution could be vulnerable to these intrusions, including a trusted national bank that has — generally well justified — faith in its employees.

Lessons to be learned?

Singapore’s Centre for Cybersecurity Institute offers some thoughts for prevention, including this:

For any business, that means a second approver on a separate device for unusual payments, limits on how much can leave in an hour, and alerts when an automated account does something new. Our guides to verifying payments against deepfake CEO fraud and to zero trust apply the same thinking …

The Ethereum wallet [in the Binance heist] emptied in under four minutes, so the response cannot start with a meeting. Decide now who can freeze accounts or stop a payment run at 4am, and keep your bank’s fraud line and your providers’ emergency contacts in your incident response plan. (October 30, 2026)

In short, banks in general may have to get much more serious about fintech or rue the consequences.

Incidentally, the ybersecurity experts quoted above mention CEO deepfakes — these are lifelike vids or audio messages that urge employees to send money somewhere. More on that in later stories, but for now, this incident really happened:

The vid, based on a real story, has fictionalized the embarrassing details. But the story shouldn’t surprise anyone. Many dedicated employees at many banks might fall for something like this.

Remember, the hackers are not trying to outwit the cybersecurity nerds in order to grab the bank’s money; they are preying on trusted human relationships.

The takeaway here is that digital transactions of all kinds now face risks that would have been rarer before the world moved online. We can have the benefits but we must put in the protections.