Zhao Changpeng "reviewed" the theft incident in a live broadcast and announced that he would give up the block reorganization

On the morning of May 8, Binance released an announcement stating that at 17:15:24 on May 7, hackers stole 7,000 bitcoins (worth about $40 million) from Binance's hot wallet at block height 575012. In response to this sudden incident, Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng conducted an online Q&A event on the video live broadcast website Periscope at 11 a.m. today as usual, and responded positively to the theft.

Image source: Cryptocurrency Hub

At the beginning of the live broadcast, Zhao Changpeng said that he had basically not rested in the past 29 hours and took a short break for 20 minutes before the live broadcast. Later, some netizens made fun of Zhao Changpeng's hairstyle, and he also responded that he was under a lot of pressure and had no rest after the hacker attack, and his hair turned white. These small talk is enough to illustrate the huge pressure that exchanges face in terms of fund security and external public opinion when facing hacker attacks.
First, he explained the attack:

"The hackers this time were very professional and patient. They had already discovered security vulnerabilities in the system and had been using viruses, phishing and other means to obtain user accounts. They were very patient and did not launch a combined internal and external attack until they obtained a large number of accounts and saw large transactions in the system."

Zhao Changpeng said that at present, Binance's focus is to restore Binance's trading system and ensure that all traces left by hackers in all Binance accounts and data are cleared. This process is expected to last for a week, during which deposits and withdrawals will be suspended. For safety reasons, users are advised to change their API keys and 2FA.
Zhao Changpeng expressed his gratitude for the concern and support from many people in the industry. However, he said that Binance has the funds and the ability to bear the loss of 7,000 BTC, although it is a huge loss. If netizens want to donate to help Binance, they can directly contact the Binance Charity Foundation.
In addition, Zhao Changpeng also responded to the hotly debated issue of "reorganizing the blockchain to deal with hacker attacks". After the attack, some community members suggested that the stolen 7,000 BTC could be distributed to miners through block reorganization, and Binance itself could also recover some of the funds, leaving the hackers with nothing. Zhao Changpeng said:

“Binance is also considering the proposal of block reorganization. In fact, if it wants to do it, it can be done within a few days. However, Binance also has many concerns and needs to carefully judge the consequences of doing so. Transaction rollback has a negative impact on the credibility of the Bitcoin network. The team decided to recheck the network first.”

He said that Binance will actively seek help from the community. The proposal of block reorganization is a technical solution provided by the community, which the Binance team had not thought of. He will also keep his social network open and keep in touch with the community at any time.
The community's reaction to the attack was also quite intense. But it seems that the focus of the incident has shifted to the question of whether to reorganize blocks/roll back transactions. Well-known crypto investor WhalePanda said on Twitter today that Binance should not reorganize the Bitcoin blockchain , and the stolen 7,000 BTC is not a large amount for Binance. Bitcoin is not Ethereum , and transactions should not be rolled back like Ethereum .

Under Binance’s official Twitter account, there were also a large number of netizens who opposed the rollback, and almost no one supported it.

Netizen Dominic Tascarella commented:

“There is absolutely no way to roll back on the Bitcoin network. Immutable transactions are what make Bitcoin Bitcoin.”

Netizen WeloveCrypto said:

“Don’t roll back! Rolling back will destroy Bitcoin in the long run.”

Seemingly hearing the voices of netizens, Zhao Changpeng later tweeted:

“After discussion, we decided not to use the reorganization method to recover the stolen amount. The main considerations are: 1. It may affect the credibility of Bitcoin; 2. It may cause the Bitcoin network and community to split; 3. This is a lesson for Binance.” (Babbitt)