The weaknesses that cost Binance $6.3 billion are already hitting Europe’s banks

Résumé détaillé

A €100 million raid on a French lender, days after Binance’s historic loss, shows the same weaknesses run through traditional finance, and AI agents could present an even bigger risk.

When hackers drained $6.3 billion from Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, on October 29, it was tempting to treat it as a crypto problem. Less than a week later, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, a French lender, disclosed that hackers had made off with roughly €100 million ($112 million).

The back-to-back attacks highlight the threat of cyber heists to traditional banks. “If a company like Binance can lose billions of dollars, the threats facing banks are overwhelming,” said Ryan Kirkley, cofounder and CEO of Global Settlement, which develops blockchain infrastructure for banks. Speaking at the Digital Asset Summit in London on November 10, he said: “It is impossible for the average bank to stay secure.”

Binance’s founder and former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, went further. “If a crypto exchange can be hacked, banks are in a worse position, in my opinion,” he told CoinDesk days after the heist.

The Binance hackers used a combination of social engineering and malicious software to take over crypto wallets and drain them of funds. This involved arranging a series of fake job interviews to persuade a Binance engineer to inadvertently download malware which allowed the hackers into the company’s systems.

The FBI has seized $1.2 billion of the stolen cryptocurrency, while Binance confirmed it had “replenished” approximately 98% of the total impacted amount.

The weaknesses hackers exploited to steal funds on Binance are not unique to crypto and the same vulnerabilities are present in traditional financial institutions, said Katerina Mitrokotsa, professor of cybersecurity at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. “Banks are not automatically safer just because they are regulated.”

Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have raised concerns. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency began calling banks on November 2 to ask about unusual activity and service disruptions, Reuters reported.

In July, the European Central Bank wrote to…

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