Binance Denies South Korean Media Report on Its Slow Response to Upbit Hack

BlockBeats News, December 12th, Binance denied the report by South Korean media that they assisted in freezing funds following a delayed response to the hack of South Korea's largest cryptocurrency platform, Upbit. A Binance spokesperson stated: "Binance's security and investigation team identified the incident and took immediate action to assist in freezing the relevant transfers to prevent further fund outflows. Therefore, any claims that we did not take timely and effective measures are baseless and inaccurate."

Earlier today, according to South Korean media KBS, Binance received a request from the South Korean police to freeze the stolen cryptocurrency assets from Upbit by hackers, but ultimately only assisted in freezing a portion of it. After the South Korean police and Upbit confirmed on the day of the incident (27th) that some of the stolen funds had flowed to Binance, they requested Binance to freeze about 470 million Korean won worth of Solana tokens. However, Binance, citing the need for "further verification of the facts," only froze 17% of the requested amount (about 80 million Korean won) and notified them with a delay of about 15 hours.

A spokesperson for Upbit stated that they could not comment on the event reported by KBS but emphasized that local law enforcement is actively investigating to determine the identity of the attacker.

On November 27th, South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange Upbit disclosed detecting abnormal withdrawal activity, with approximately 540 billion Korean won (about $36 million) worth of Solana network-related digital assets being transferred to an unknown external wallet address.