FBI blames North Korea for Binance hack worth over $6 billion — Der Spiegel

The FBI said that the North Korean hacker group TraderTraitor was behind a large-scale cyberattack on the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, during which assets worth more than $6 billion were stolen. Der Spiegel reports.

FBI calls for crypto addresses to be blocked

The US agency called on companies to block transactions involving certain cryptocurrency addresses to prevent the perpetrators from laundering the stolen assets. Binance had previously reported the temporary suspension of all deposit and withdrawal operations.

Analytics company TRM Labs also linked the attack to TraderTraitor. According to its estimate, the perpetrators moved most of the assets, with a total value of $6.36 billion, within 20 minutes. TRM Labs called the incident the largest attack on a cryptocurrency exchange by value of assets stolen.

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Assets were withdrawn from several wallets

According to TRM Labs, the attack began on Thursday evening, when crypto assets worth more than $100 million were initially withdrawn from Binance. The attackers then sequentially emptied crypto wallets. The stolen assets included bitcoins, USDT stablecoins, as well as XRP, SOL and other crypto assets.

TRM Labs believes that access to wallets protected by different methods and located on different blockchains may indicate that the attackers had access to Binance's central systems. The exchange named a hacked laptop belonging to one of its employees as a possible route of intrusion.

Binance said it would cover 90% of the total amount of stolen funds, including through the repurchase of assets, and that the company, rather than its users, would bear the financial consequences. The exchange also said it expected to restore withdrawals for users on Sunday.