FBI confirms record $6.3 Billion Binance crypto heist linked to North Korea’s elite state-sponsored hackers - The News International
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has formally attributed a staggering $6.3 billion cyber heist against Binance—the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange to state-sponsored hackers operating out of North Korea.
The massive attack, which unfolded across multiple blockchains in a matter of minutes, stands as the largest digital asset theft in history.
Federal investigators identified TraderTraitor—a North Korean advanced persistent threat (APT) hacking operation associated with the broader Lazarus cybercrime ecosystem—as the group responsible for compromising exchange infrastructure and draining hot wallets.
According to Reuters, leader Kim Jong Un has assembled an army of world-class hackers using such incentives in a programme more than a decade old that picks 200 of the smartest middle school students each year to study computer engineering, defectors and analysts say.
A fraction eventually become hackers in an investment that has paid off dramatically, as the group has evolved from the early days when it ran illegal gambling websites to pulling off the world's biggest cyber heist last month.
"They are actually one of Kim Jong Un's secret weapons," said Kim Heung-kwang, a North Korean defector who trained hackers of behalf of the state before fleeing to South Korea in 2004.
"There is no other country grooming hackers like this, systematically searching for the smartest children, solely to turn them into operatives," he added. "Whether they want to be a hacker or not does not matter."
Preliminary forensic findings indicated that initial unauthorized access occurred via a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which allowed malicious actors to access internal service containers and authorize massive automated withdrawal transactions.
Through rapid collaboration between Binance, blockchain analytics firms, law enforcement, and major stablecoin issuers (including Tether, which froze roughly $1.57 billion, and Circle, which locked over $800 million), authorities successfully froze billions of the stolen funds on-chain.
Binance has pledged to cover all remaining losses using its emergency reserves and company funds.
North Korea set up a cyber unit in 1998 but elevated its status after Kim came to power and declared in 2013 that cyber warfare was, along with nuclear weapons and missiles, an "all purpose sword" crucial to the country's strike capability.
As reported, previously Pyongyang sharply dismissed the FBI's findings through state media, with high-ranking officials labeling the attribution "absurd rhetoric" and a "grave political provocation" designed to frame North Korea as a cybercriminal state.
Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence agencies emphasize that the regime increasingly relies on state-directed cyberattacks to bypass international sanctions and fund its strategic programs.
