The FBI on Saturday blamed North Korea for the largest cryptocurrency theft on record, a roughly $6.3 billion raid on Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, according to Reuters.
The bureau said a North Korean state-sponsored unit known as TraderTraitor was responsible for the attack, Reuters reported in a story carried by CBC News. Members of the unit were observed by law enforcement converting stolen assets into the cryptocurrency ethereum, and the FBI said it expects “further laundering” of the assets, according to Reuters.
FBI links North Korea to theft of $6 billion from Binance https://t.co/LG20F2DlO7
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 31, 2026
The theft began on the afternoon of Oct. 29, when funds started leaving Binance hot wallets across multiple blockchains, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. Chainalysis said the unauthorized transfers totaled approximately $6.4 billion, which it called the largest theft in the history of crypto. Freezes on some of the stolen funds began within about an hour, the firm said.
Private investigators pointed at Pyongyang before the FBI did. Chainalysis said it attributed the hack to TraderTraitor after its investigators watched, in real time, stolen Binance funds mixing on-chain with money taken in last month’s Bitget theft, which had been tied to North Korea. The BBC reported that TRM Labs and Chainalysis identified the Lazarus Group, also known as TraderTraitor, “with high confidence” as the likely culprit.
Binance says users will not take the hit
Binance said Saturday it has been able to replace 90% of the stolen amount by using company money to buy new tokens, according to Reuters. The remaining 10% consists of less liquid tokens that may take longer to buy, the exchange said in a statement posted on X, Reuters reported.
“We’ve now replenished 90 per cent of the stolen assets, and we’re committed to covering the remaining 10 per cent. Our users will not bear the financial impact of this incident,” Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said on X on Saturday, according to Reuters.
Binance said it has set aside around $6.34 billion of company funds internally to cover the losses, Reuters reported. The money used to re-buy tokens came from part of its $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users, some of its Futures Insurance Fund and the company’s own corporate treasury, according to Reuters. The exchange stopped customer withdrawals after the hack but said Saturday it was still on track to reopen them on Sunday, Reuters reported.
How the attackers got in is still not fully clear. Binance initially said it thought an engineer’s laptop had been compromised, but later said the attack was wider, according to the BBC. “Our subsequent investigation has uncovered additional points of breach,” Teng said, the BBC reported. Teng said Friday that the breach was a “complex attack” involving malicious software designed to delete evidence of its activity, according to Reuters.
A regime that steals to survive
This is not the first time federal investigators have pinned a mega-heist on Kim Jong Un’s hackers. Last year, the FBI said North Korea was responsible for the theft of $1.5 billion from the Bybit exchange, the BBC reported. Experts accuse North Korea’s government of relying on cybercrime to finance itself, something Pyongyang has long denied, according to the BBC.
North Korean agents are accused in the Binance case of using a special authorization to turn an internet-connected Binance hot wallet into one that moved funds automatically to the attacker, the BBC reported. Chainalysis said the attacker swapped $325 million in stablecoins for $285 million in ether over nearly 20 minutes to stay ahead of freezes.
Crypto prices fell on Friday as Binance sought to reassure customers that their funds were safe, according to Reuters. The FBI has not publicly said how much of the stolen money it expects to recover.
Sources
- Reuters via CBC News: Binance says billions replaced from hack that FBI blames on North Korea
- BBC: Why North Korea’s ‘elite’ hackers are the prime suspect in major Binance hack
- Chainalysis: Binance Hack: Tracing the $6.4 Billion Theft to North Korea
- Reuters on X: FBI links North Korea to theft of $6 billion from Binance
Sources cited
Sources
- Original post: Reuters (@Reuters) on X, Oct 31, 2026
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