The record $6.3B Binance heist may have started with a fake Homebrew install on Mac

What happened?

Last week, Binance disclosed that $6.3 billion had been stolen from wallets on its platform. The company managed to freeze nearly $3 billion, but the attack has been described as the largest financial heist in human history.

The Mac connection

According to 9to5Mac, security researcher Christopher Lopez and other experts suspect the attack may have started on a Mac. Last year's $1.5 billion Bybit heist also began on a developer's Mac.

Macs are widely used by DevOps engineers and people in crypto, which makes them a frequent target of malware and social engineering campaigns, the report notes.

Fake Homebrew install

The headline claim is that the attack started with a fake Homebrew install. Homebrew is a popular package manager that simplifies software installation on Macs; a fake installer could give attackers a foothold on a system.

Not yet confirmed

At this stage, the Mac and Homebrew link is presented as a claim and an assessment by researchers; the exact technical cause of the incident has not been confirmed.