Crypto Exchange Binance Restarting Services After Post-Hack Upgrade

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has announced that it is back online after completing a security upgrade prompted by a recent hack.

Kicking off at 03:00 UTC Wednesday, the upgrade meant that all services were suspended during this period, according to a Binance support message. A two-hour extension to the upgrade was announced this morning as some tasks took "longer than expected."

Following the upgrade, Binance published an update saying that trading will recommence at 13:00 UTC.  Users can now cancel open orders and process deposits, while withdrawals "will be available shortly after trading resumes," it said.

Deposits and withdrawals have been offline since the hack last week, which Binance said saw 7,000 BTC (worth about $41 million at the time) stolen from the exchange’s hot wallet. Exchange customers would not be affected by the losses, Binance said.

Following the breach, CZ said in a blog post that the exchange would make “significant” changes related to its application programming interface (API), two-factor authentication (2FA) and withdrawal validation to reduce the risk of future hacks.

The exchange did not disclose full details regarding these efforts due to security concerns, but did say it's also improving risk management and know-your-customer procedures to fight phishing, among other measures at the back-end.

UPDATE - Zhao sent out an update noting that withdrawals "will be open shortly."

"A new requirement to be logged in while confirming the withdrawal mail was added. It caused a small conflict while using the app so it will be rolled back shortly," he wrote.

Changpeng Zhao image via Binance