NEW YORK — North Korean hackers orchestrated the theft of billions of dollars from Binance within minutes, marking the largest cryptocurrency heist in history, the FBI announced Saturday.
In a public statement, the bureau tied the week’s attack to “malicious cyber activity” by an entity known as TraderTraitor—the same actors behind last year’s $1.5 billion Bybit hack.
The FBI called on cryptocurrency exchanges, blockchain analytics firms, and other industry participants to block transactions linked to various addresses, aiming to prevent the stolen funds from being laundered or their origins concealed.
According to the agency’s investigation, TraderTraitor has primarily converted the stolen assets into Ethereum. The FBI expects the group will next attempt to liquidate the holdings using decentralized finance platforms and “instant swap services.”
On Thursday, roughly $6.3 billion in Bitcoin and other digital currencies was stolen from Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, in an operation that several crypto security experts said bore the hallmarks of a North Korean hack.
Binance said Saturday that it held enough of the same digital currencies that were stolen to cover 90 percent of the missing assets, and promised that affected customers would be fully reimbursed.