Binance stumps up $318k bounty for hacker's arrest

Binance has put up a US$250,000 (A$318,000) equivalent bounty for information that leads to the arrest of those behind a failed attack on the cryptocurrency exchange last week.

In a Medium post, the company offered “the first person to supply substantial information and evidence that leads to the legal arrest of the hackers, in any jurisdiction ... the equivalent of $250,000 USD in BNB”, Binance’s own virtual coin.

“The exchange rate will be determined at time of transfer,” the company said.

Binance’s systems managed to shut down a sophisticated attack late last week, whereby a number of users had their credentials phished and alt-coin holdings stolen and traded away.

The attack was foiled because Binance’s systems detected trading anomalies on a particular coin and halted the ability of users to withdraw funds while those anomalies were investigated.

Binance said that even though the attack was ultimately unsuccessful, “it was clear it was a large-scale, organised effort”.

“This needs to be addressed,” the exchange said. “We can’t simply play defence. We need to actively prevent any instances of hacking before they occur, as well as follow through after-the-fact.”

Binance also said it had allocated “the equivalent of US$10,000,000 in crypto reserves for future bounty awards against any illegal hacking attempts on Binance".

“We have also invited other exchanges and crypto businesses to join our initiative,” it said.

Binance is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It does not allow users to convert fiat to virtual currency or vice versa, but instead allows users to trade Bitcoin for a large range of alt-coins.