FBI pins $6.3B Binance crypto heist on North Korean hackers

Exchange scrambles to replace stolen funds as customers withdraw billions and hackers get busy laundering their haul

The FBI has blamed North Korean hackers for the record-breaking $6.3 billion theft from cryptocurrency exchange Binance, pointing the finger at the notorious Lazarus Group as the exchange scrambles to replace stolen funds and reassure customers.

In an alert published Saturday, the agency attributed the October 29 attack to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking operation linked to Lazarus, which has made a lucrative career out of relieving crypto exchanges of their digital assets.

Pyongyang was already in the frame before the FBI weighed in. Blockchain intelligence firms TRM Labs and Elliptic had linked the theft to North Korea, with TRM reporting that most of the $6.36 billion haul disappeared in about 20 minutes. Elliptic, which puts the total closer to $6.43 billion, says it has verified that $2.85 billion of the stolen assets have been frozen or seized.

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According to the FBI, the hackers have started swapping their loot for Ethereum, with investigators expecting them to move the funds through decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms and instant swap services to make the money harder to trace.

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The agency has published a list of cryptocurrency wallet addresses linked to the theft and is urging exchanges, blockchain analytics firms, and other virtual asset providers to block transactions involving the stolen funds.

The FBI's attribution comes days after Binance admitted that hackers had made off with roughly $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency. According to the exchange, the trouble started with a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which gave the intruders access to a service container and allowed them to authorize withdrawals they had no business making. 

Binance has since resumed customer withdrawals, which it suspended after the attack, and says it has now replenished about 95 percent of the stolen assets. The remaining tokens are proving harder to replace because of their limited liquidity.

The exchange has committed billions of dollars from its own reserves and emergency funds to cover the losses, with co-CEO Richard Teng promising that customers won't be left footing the bill.

That hasn't stopped users from heading for the exits. Binance recorded approximately $3.64 billion in net outflows after withdrawals resumed, although the company said this represented only around 2.1 percent of its reported assets.

Replacing the stolen cryptocurrency is one thing. Getting it back from North Korea is another, and investigators face the considerable task of tracking billions of dollars as the hackers attempt to move it beyond their reach.

TraderTraitor has form when it comes to raiding crypto exchanges. The North Korean crew has previously been linked to a string of cryptocurrency thefts, including the $308 million attack on Japan's DMM Bitcoin exchange in 2024. The group has previously used fake job offers and recruitment exercises to trick employees into handing over access to their employers' systems.

As we reported here on Friday, crypto exchange Bitget has now confirmed that the cyberattack where hackers drained $387.5 million worth of digital assets from the exchange’s wallets also has all the hallmarks of a North Korean operation. Its CEO did not go into too much detail, but did say that “IP behavioral patterns and on-chain signatures” suggest it was Kim’s cronies at work.

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This isn’t Binance's first expensive encounter with hackers, either. Back in 2022, attackers exploited its BNB blockchain bridge and made off with roughly $566 million in tokens.

Four years later, the sums have grown considerably. Binance may have the reserves to make its customers whole, but the attackers responsible for the latest raid still have billions of dollars to launder. ®