FILE – The Binance logo is seen on a smartphone, Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa.
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Matt Slocum/AP
A U.S.-based blockchain intelligence firm says a North Korean unit was likely behind the hack that impacted more than $6 billion on Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange.
Binance said it worked with blockchain partners to freeze roughly $3 billion in affected assets. It said Friday that it was beginning to recover assets for users.
The cryptocurrency exchange said deposits were unaffected, while withdrawals have been suspended and are expected to resume in the next day or two. It said it will cover all losses.
The company said on X that an initial investigation suggested the incident may have involved a compromised laptop, but that a subsequent investigation uncovered additional “points of breach.”
TRM, in a post on its website Thursday, attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, which it described as North Korea’s elite hacking unit. “We make this judgment with high confidence,” the firm said.
“An attacker moved approximately USD 6.36 billion out of Binance wallets on ten blockchains, most of it in about 20 minutes,” TRM said. That would make the hack the largest cryptocurrency theft on record, it said.
In February last year, another cryptocurrency exchange, Bybit, suffered a $1.5 billion hit when it was hacked. The FBI said North Korea and TraderTraitor were responsible for the hack.
“Several features of this attack match earlier North Korea-linked heists, including the Bybit hack,” TRM said.
Blockchain analysis company Chainalysis also believed the Binance hack was “likely done by DPRK group TraderTraitor,” its co-founder and CEO Jonathan Levin wrote on X. DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.
Asked about the potential ties to North Korea, a Binance spokesperson said only that the company is “working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of the criminals and bring them to justice.”
Experts say North Korea has turned to crypto hacking and other illicit cyber activities as a source of badly needed foreign currency to support its troubled economy and fund its nuclear program in the wake of tough U.N. sanctions and other difficulties.
In December 2022, South Korea’s spy agency said North Korean hackers had stolen an estimated 1.5 trillion won ($1.1 billion) in cryptocurrency and other virtual assets in the past five years, more than half of it in 2022 alone. It said North Korea’s capacity to steal digital assets was considered among the best in the world.
Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, founded Binance in 2017. In 2023, he pleaded guilty to a felony linked to failing to prevent money laundering on the platform, and stepped down as the company’s CEO. U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Zhao in 2025.
Zhao posted Thursday on X that “User funds are safe!” but added that the theft “does look like a hack on Binance.” He added that while he doesn’t manage Binance anymore, “as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered.”
The event, meanwhile, also raises questions about why stronger approval controls were not in place, said Kok Tin Gan, cofounder and CEO of cybersecurity firm NyxLab.
“This looks like one signature that gave the attacker a never-expiring, full-access token to a Binance hot wallet,” he said, referring to cryptocurrency wallets that hold users’ “private keys,” or unique authorizations, digitally and which are connected to the internet.
Binance said on X it had “found no evidence of any wallet private key leak” and that the company would release more technical details when its probe is complete.
This story originally appeared on NPR
