Binance froze $4.2 million of XRP stolen in attack on Ripple co-founder

Binance announced on Feb. 1 that it has frozen $4.2 million of XRP that was stolen from a Ripple executive one day earlier.

Binance CEO Richard Teng said:

“After finding out early on about the exploit … we’re happy to say that the Binance team has managed to freeze $4.2 Million worth of XRP stolen by the exploiter.”

Teng said that Binance will continue to support ongoing investigations and efforts to retrieve the funds. He added that Binance will monitor funds that remain in the exploiter’s external wallets — the majority of the funds stolen — in case any more of that amount is deposited to the crypto exchange.

The original hack involved a theft of $112 million worth of XRP, meaning that Binance only froze about 3.75% of the stolen funds.

Teng erroneously identified the exploit as targeting Ripple itself. XRP Ledger Foundation member Thomas Silkjær corrected him, noting that the attack targeted Larsen’s own XRP addresses rather than Ripple’s corporate XRP accounts. Various Ripple members stated that fact in comments yesterday.

Teng acknowledged the correction, writing: “Appreciate [the] note on wording — to clarify, these were [Larsen’s] personal wallets that were exploited.”

Ripple is now responsible for investigation

Silkjaer said that the XRP Ledger Foundation has handed all data to Ripple, meaning that the latter is now responsible for leading the investigation.

Silkjaer also denied that on-chain sleuth ZachXBT played a significant role in responding to the incident. Whereas Teng said that ZachXBT flagged exchanges about the theft, Silkjær said that ZachXBT “carelessly published on social media” one day after the attack occurred and the investigation began.

Details of the attack are largely unknown. Ripple and associated parties have not posted further details since acknowledging the attack yesterday.

Though some sources have reported a drop in XRP prices, the token is up 0.5% over 24 hours. By comparison, the crypto market is up 0.7%.

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