Withdrawals are on track to reopen Sunday. The FBI asked crypto firms to block hundreds of wallet addresses.
WASHINGTON – The FBI on Saturday formally accused North Korea of stealing more than $6 billion in digital assets from the cryptocurrency exchange Binance on or about Oct. 29, confirming earlier suspicions from analytics firms in what is thought to be the largest crypto heist ever.
The bureau said the theft was carried out by “TraderTraitor,” its name for North Korean state-sponsored hackers, the same group it blamed for last year’s $1.5 billion Bybit hack. With the Secret Service and IRS Criminal Investigation, it said it has seen the hackers converting stolen assets mainly into Ethereum. The FBI published more than 600 Ethereum addresses, fewer than 20 bitcoin addresses and one Solana address linked to the theft, and asked the crypto industry to block transactions involving them. Chainalysis chief executive Jonathan Levin said the attackers have already used “thousands of addresses.”
Binance said Saturday it has replaced 90% of the stolen amount by using company money to buy new tokens and has set aside about $6.34 billion of its own funds to cover losses. It said it is still on track to reopen withdrawals on Sunday. Binance had said earlier that the incident started with a compromised engineer’s laptop and that it found no evidence of a wallet private key leak.
President Donald Trump, asked about the hack, said “we’re learning about it” and that his administration would talk to North Korea about it, CoinDesk reported. North Korea’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to Newsweek.
The hack shows North Korea’s capacity to raise money despite sanctions over its nuclear and missile programs. Suspected North Korea-linked actors accounted for nearly 89% of reported crypto hack losses this year, according to TheStreet.
This report draws on information from the FBI, Reuters, CoinDesk, NBC News and Newsweek.