"8 Trillion Won Stolen in Just 20 Minutes"... FBI Names the Culprit

'TraderTraitor' Identified
Evidence of Assets Converted Into Ethereum Detected

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said on October 31 (local time) that it had identified North Korea as being behind the hack of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, in which cryptocurrency worth $6.3 billion (approximately KRW 8.4 trillion) was stolen. The FBI also said it had detected signs that the stolen assets were being converted into Ethereum (ETH).

In a press release, the FBI said, "We are identifying the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as being behind the theft of more than $6 billion in cryptocurrency from Binance." The FBI said the perpetrators were TraderTraitor, known as an elite North Korean hacking group, and announced that it had "detected signs that TraderTraitor actors were primarily converting the stolen assets into Ethereum." North Korea had been suspected of being behind the hack since it occurred, but this is the first time the FBI has officially confirmed its involvement. The FBI said it had observed the stolen assets being converted into Ethereum together with the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI).

The FBI expects further laundering of the stolen cryptocurrency through its conversion into other cryptocurrencies using decentralized finance (DeFi) and instant exchange services. The agency listed Ethereum, Bitcoin (BTC), and Solana (SOL) wallet addresses that the actors have used or appear to be using, and urged the public to "block transactions associated with, or originating from, addresses that TraderTraitor actors are using to launder the stolen assets."

Binance previously said it suffered the unauthorized withdrawal of cryptocurrency worth $6.3 billion in about 20 minutes in an attack that exploited an engineer's hacked laptop and a vulnerability in its transaction approval system. This is the largest single hack in the history of the cryptocurrency industry. Binance said it had frozen about $3 billion of the stolen assets.

In a notice posted on its website, Binance later said that 90% of the losses were currently covered. In particular, 100% of the reserves for the 10 largest cryptocurrency assets by trading volume had been secured. The remaining 10% of assets, for which provisioning has not yet been completed, are coins with relatively low liquidity. Binance said it was also securing supplies of these assets in turn through on-exchange purchases and over-the-counter trades.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.