Binance reports potential $6.3 billion security breach

🗞️ Story file #1156

Binance reports potential $6.3 billion security breach

Oct 29, 9 PM ET to Oct 30, 5 AM ET

19outlets carried it
🫏12 · 4 · 3🐘left · center · right
8 hourson the front pages
19front pages at once, at its peak
14 minof TV captions
1radio newscast
11people retold it online

👣 How this story traveled: from the front pages that broke it, out through TV, radio and the shows, into what people retold and what fact-checkers examined, and on into the saga it is part of. Everything here is matched to the story by our tools, so a link can be wrong; the trackers' pages say how each is made.

Oct 29, 9 PM ETfirst on a front page: The Guardian
Oct 29, 10 PM ETfirst on TV: BBC News
Oct 30, 2 AM ETfirst on the radio: NPR News Now
Oct 30, 4 AM ETretold online by 11 people
Oct 30, 5 AM ETpeak: on 19 front pages

the front pages that ran it, hour by hour

gaining fast: stories gathering like this went wide 8 times in 10 (47 stories)

Front pages carrying it at each hourly run, Oct 29, 9 PM to Oct 30, 5 AM ET (peak 19), by the outlets' lean: left · center · right

Who carried it and when: each outlet in the order it picked the story up, a bar for each headline from when we first saw it on the front page to when we last did, in the outlet's lean color (dashed: not rated); a dot marks a new headline, and a headline swapped for a new one between our hourly looks runs on to it. A gap means a look found the story gone from that front page. Beneath, its captions on TV, the radio newscasts that carried it (bigger: the lead) and when people were found retelling it. Hover for details.

📡 Wire copy

1 outlet ran the AP, Reuters headline nearly word for word

HuffPost

💬 Quoted

“potential security issue,”2
“Security Incident”2
“Elite North Korean group”1
“Elite North Korean hackers”1
“security incident”1
“largest hack in history”1
“Potential Security Issue,”2
“potential security issue”2

phrases its headlines put in quotation marks; the bar is how many outlets did

📌 Linked by aggregators

2 Drudge Report · Google News

aggregators linking to it from their front page (they don't count as outlets covering it)

✏️ 11 outlets ran more than one headline on it (reworded, or a follow-up)

AP (3 wordings): “Binance reports ‘potential security issue’ as stablecoin issuers freeze millions in funds” → “Binance flags ‘potential security issue,’ says approximately $6.3 billion impacted”
Axios (2 wordings): “Binance probes what may be biggest-ever crypto hack” → “Binance halts trading after biggest-ever crypto hack”
BBC (7 wordings): “Crypto giant Binance freezes $2.5bn of assets over suspected hack” → “What we know about Binance's $6.3bn hack”
Business Insider (2 wordings): “Binance and Polymarket are investigating potential hacks. The former says it's frozen around $3 billion.” → “Binance and Polymarket are investigating potential hacks. The former says $6.3 billion is affected.”
CNBC (4 wordings): “Binance 'potential security issue' sees $2.54 billion frozen” → “Bitcoin tumbles as Binance hack rattles crypto markets”
Financial Times (2 wordings): “Binance halts withdrawals after $6.3bn hack” → “Binance halts withdrawals after record $6.3bn heist”
HuffPost (2 wordings): “Binance Flags ‘Potential Security Issue,’ Says Crypto Firms Froze More Than $2.5 Billion” → “Binance Flags ‘Potential Security Issue,’ Says Approximately $6.3 Billion Impacted”
Reuters (4 wordings): “Tether, Circle freeze $2.38 billion after Binance reports security incident” → “Where Binance's $6.3 billion breach ranks in crypto's biggest hacks and heists - Reuters”
The Guardian (5 wordings): “Crypto firms freeze more than $2.5bn in funds as Binance investigates potential hack” → “‘Elite North Korean group’ blamed for $6.3bn Binance hack in biggest ever crypto heist”
The Washington Post (2 wordings): “Crypto firms freeze $3 billion as fears of a massive hack spread” → “Binance freezes billions in cryptocurrency after massive hack”
Yahoo News (2 wordings): “After what may be the biggest-ever crypto heist, Binance freezes $3 billion in assets” → “Hackers steal record $6.3 billion from Binance in just 20 minutes”