The FBI says North Korean hackers were behind the theft of $6.3 billion from Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, calling it the biggest crypto heist in history.
In a statement issued Saturday, the bureau linked the attack to a group known as TraderTraitor, the same hackers blamed for last year’s $1.5 billion theft from the exchange Bybit. The theft itself happened Thursday, when the massive sum in bitcoin and other digital currency vanished from Binance within minutes.
The FBI has asked crypto exchanges and blockchain analytics firms to block transactions tied to specific addresses connected to the hack, in an effort to stop the stolen money from being laundered. Investigators say TraderTraitor has been converting the stolen assets mainly into Ethereum, and the bureau expects the group to next try moving the funds through decentralized finance platforms and so-called instant swap services.
President Trump, asked about the hack Saturday night during a Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, suggested investigators hadn’t settled on North Korea as the culprit.
“I’m not concerned. We’re learning about it,” Trump told reporters. “We don’t know if it’s North Korea.”
He added that it could still turn out that North Korea was responsible.
A cat-and-mouse chase
Crypto expert Ari Redbord, chief policy officer at blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, said he expects the hackers to break up the stolen funds and funnel them through smaller exchanges to avoid detection — a process that could stretch on for months.
“It’s bank robbery, in this case, at the speed of the Internet,” Redbord said. “However, we can also track and trace those funds in real time in order to build investigations, to disrupt and to seize back funds.”
“It’s just this cat and mouse game,” he added.
Several crypto experts said the attack had the hallmarks of a North Korean operation even before the FBI’s statement. Binance said Saturday it has set aside enough of the same digital currency that was stolen to cover 90% of the missing assets and promised customers would be fully reimbursed.
