Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Thursday that it has temporarily suspended all deposits and withdrawals as it looks into a potential security incident.
In a series of social media posts, the company said it was working "around the clock" and that it will eventually "share a full post-mortem" as it works with law enforcement.
"Binance will cover all losses," one of the posts on X said.
A subsequent update from the company said that "the current verified total frozen amount is around $3 billion", and a pinned post on X said that "user funds" were "completely safe."
Binance said that while it investigates, users need to be vigilant for potential scams.
"Users should remain cautious of scams and should not trust unofficial links, messages, or requests for account information," the company said.
The cryptocurrency exchange also promised that trading would resume as soon as the security issue was resolved.
Several hours after initially posting a series of bulletins about the issue, Binance wrote a lengthier update explaining what the company believed transpired.
"Binance's initial investigation suggests that the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions," the statement read in part.
"We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak ... the estimated total impact sits at around $6.3 billion," the company added.
Binance has referred to itself as "the world’s leading blockchain ecosystem and cryptocurrency infrastructure provider".
According to the company's LinkedIn profile, it employs at least 5,000 people around the world.
