North Korea hackers blamed for record $6B crypto theft

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange company, suspended withdrawals after hackers broke into its digital wallets and stole $6 billion Thursday, with blockchain intelligence companies naming this the largest crypto theft on record. Binance later said that users’ funds were safe and it could cover the stolen money.

TRM, a company that investigates crypto-related fraud, determined that an attacker moved about $6.36 billion out of Binance wallets on ten blockchains. TRM said it was the largest crypto theft on record. TRM attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, North Korea’s elite hacking unit, based on robust on and off-chain intelligence.

Binance announced a potential security issue Thursday, advising users to be wary of links or messages that could be potential scams. Then, on Friday, the firm said that while their initial investigation suggested that while the security incident involved a compromised laptop, more points of breach were identified later. Binance said issuers, blockchain intelligence firms, and industry partners are helping them to trace, freeze, and recover additional funds. The BBC reported that the FBI and U.S. Secret Service were involved.

Is the users’ money safe? Binance reassured users that their funds were safe and said that they would cover all losses from its Secure Asset Fund for Users, and from company funds. The exchange said deposits remained unaffected, and they expected to resume withdrawal services in 45 hours. The exchange said that the attacks stopped once they paused the withdrawal services and froze around $3 billion worth of assets.

In a statement posted two hours later, Binance said it had already allocated more than $6.34 billion in company funds to cover the incident. Of that total, $5 billion is already held in the same tokenized assets that were affected. They are purchasing the remaining funds, but it will take time because some tokens may have low liquidity.