The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has identified North Korea as the perpetrator behind the hacking of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, which resulted in the theft of $6.3 billion in digital assets.
On October 31, Bloomberg reported that the FBI announced in a press release, "We inform you that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) is behind the theft of over $6 billion in cryptocurrency from Binance."
Following the incident, several blockchain analysis firms in the U.S. had already pointed to North Korean hacking groups as the culprits, and now U.S. authorities have officially named North Korea as the responsible party. President Donald Trump also mentioned the day before that an investigation was underway to determine if North Korea was involved in the Binance hack.
The FBI identified the hacking group as 'TraderTraitor,' linked to North Korea. The agency stated that through collaborative investigations with the United States Secret Service (USSS) and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), they have detected movements to convert the stolen assets primarily into Ethereum (ETH).
Furthermore, the FBI anticipates that the stolen assets will undergo additional money laundering through decentralized finance (DeFi) and instant exchange services to convert them into other cryptocurrencies.
The FBI also released a list of Ethereum, Bitcoin (BTC), and Solana (SOL) wallet addresses that were used or may have been used in the operation. They urged to block transactions related to these addresses or originating from them.
Previously, Binance reported that $6.3 billion worth of digital assets was unlawfully withdrawn due to a hacking incident targeting an engineer's laptop and exploiting vulnerabilities in the transaction approval system.
Experts have assessed that this Binance hack is the largest single hacking incident in the history of the cryptocurrency industry and ranks among the most significant cybersecurity incidents overall. The event has sent shockwaves throughout the cryptocurrency sector, which has been pushing for integration into regulated financial markets.
North Korean hackers have been known to target cryptocurrency exchanges in the past. Notable incidents include the $1.5 billion hack of Bybit last year and the theft of approximately $620 million in digital assets in 2022.
The FBI had previously identified TraderTraitor, North Korea's elite hacking group, as responsible for the Bybit hack.
* This article has been translated by AI.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.