Binance hack: FBI accuses North Korea of ​​“heist of the century”

This Saturday, the FBI formally accused North Korea of ​​the record theft of $6.3 billion (around 5.6 billion euros) thanks to the hacking of Binance, the world's leading cryptocurrency exchange. “The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is responsible for the theft of more than US$6 billion in virtual assets from the Binance cryptocurrency exchange around October 29,” the FBI wrote in a statement.

American investigators claim to have identified the North Korean hacker group TraderTraitor behind this unprecedented theft, and found that the thieves were converting the embezzled funds into Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network. “It is intended that these assets will then be further laundered through conversions via DeFi services and instant exchanges, in order to prepare them for further laundering steps,” the statement said.

Federal police have published a list of approximately 500 addresses “that TraiderTraitor actors are using to launder these stolen assets.” They also asked cryptocurrency platforms, DeFi services and blockchain analysis companies to block transactions linked to these addresses.

Still according to the FBI, the amount stolen represents four times that which TraitorTrader had siphoned off the ByBit platform in February 2025, at the time the largest theft of cryptocurrencies. The North Korean group is considered part of the Lazarus Group, itself affiliated with the country's intelligence services. Lazarus became known in 2014 when he was accused of hacking Sony Pictures Entertainment studios in retaliation for the satirical film about North Korea The Interview That Kills!

The scale of the Binance hack highlighted the ability of North Korea, hit by heavy international sanctions because of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, to generate income illicitly.

US President Donald Trump, who regularly boasts of having good personal relations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has however expressed doubts about Pyongyang's involvement. “I'm not worried. We are learning more. We don't know if it's North Korea,” he told reporters at his Florida residence Saturday evening.

For its part, Binance announced this Sunday that some of its clients – the platform claims 335 million users – could start making withdrawals again. “The first round of withdrawals (...) is now open on the bitcoin network,” the company said on X. “Binance will bear the financial impact of the stolen funds, not our users,” it previously announced, still on

“We are taking a staged approach by prioritizing tokens based on user demand data from the past week, so that each network-asset pair can be reinstated cautiously, once stability and security checks are completed before access is reopened,” she had explained. During their withdrawal operations, “users may experience temporary delays or longer processing times due to traffic volume,” she warned.

Machine-translated from French