Dodgy download and spoofed job ad led to $6.3 billion Binance hack: attacker offered fake software and fake job to infiltrate company wallets and steal billions

A chain of events that led to a record-breaking $6.3 billion mega-hack began with a dodgy download, so says the company that was hacked, Binance.

The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange says that the hack was not a "single isolated breach or simple phishing incident"; multiple steps were required to break through its security measures. It all began when a Wallet DevOps engineer (named Engineer A) downloaded a tampered Homebrew installation that was suggested to them by an unnamed search engine.

Homebrew is a third-party package manager for macOS. A report from the SANS Technology Institute, linked to in Binance's investigation, suggests that malicious adverts for Homebrew have been spotted in search engine results, hoping to ensnare users into installing malware on a user's PC.

"Our security team detected the anomaly, replaced the device, and rotated all related credentials as a proactive security action," Binance says. …