Intelligence firm links North Korea with 6.3 billion-dollar Binance hack

A North Korean hacking unit was likely behind the theft of more than six billion dollars on the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, a US-based blockchain intelligence firm has said.

Binance said that approximately 6.3 billion dollars (£4.6 billion) was impacted, which its founder described as “like a hack”.

The company said it worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, and roughly three billion dollars (£2.2 billion) was frozen.

The cryptocurrency exchange added that it had temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while security checks are completed.

Intelligence firm TRM, in a post on its website, attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, which it described as North Korea’s elite hacking unit.

“We make this judgment with high confidence,” the firm said.

“An attacker moved approximately 6.36 billion USD out of Binance wallets on 10 blockchains, most of it in about 20 minutes,” TRM said.

That would make the hack the largest cryptocurrency theft on record, it said.

In February last year, another cryptocurrency exchange, Bybit, suffered a 1.5 billion-dollar (£1.1 billion) hit when it was hacked. The FBI said North Korea and TraderTraitor were responsible for the hack.

TRM said: “Several features of this attack match earlier North Korea-linked heists, including the Bybit hack.”

Blockchain analysis company Chainalysis also believed the Binance hack was “likely done by DPRK group TraderTraitor”, its co-founder and chief executive Jonathan Levin wrote on X.

DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.

Asked about the potential ties to North Korea, a Binance spokesperson said only that the company is “working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of the criminals and bring them to justice”.

Experts say North Korea has turned to crypto hacking and other illicit cyber activities as a source of badly needed foreign currency to support its troubled economy and fund its nuclear program in the wake of tough UN sanctions and other difficulties.

In December 2022, South Korea’s spy agency said North Korean hackers had stolen an estimated 1.5 trillion won (£838 million) in cryptocurrency and other virtual assets in the past five years, more than half of it in 2022 alone.

It said North Korea’s capacity to steal digital assets was considered among the best in the world.

Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, founded Binance in 2017.

In 2023, he pleaded guilty to a felony linked to failing to prevent money laundering on the platform, and stepped down as the company’s chief executive.

US President Donald Trump pardoned Mr Zhao in 2025.

Mr Zhao posted Thursday on X that “User funds are safe!” but added that the theft “does look like a hack on Binance”.

He added that while he doesn’t manage Binance anymore, “as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered”.

On Thursday, Binance said it would cover the losses from the apparent hack.

The event, meanwhile, also raises questions on why stronger approval controls were not in place, said Kok Tin Gan, co-founder and chief executive of cybersecurity firm NyxLab.

“This looks like one signature that gave the attacker a never-expiring, full-access token to a Binance hot wallet,” he said, referring to cryptocurrency wallets that hold users’ “private keys”, or unique authorisations, digitally and which are connected to the internet.

Binance said on X it had “found no evidence of any wallet private key leak” and that the company would release more technical details when its probe is complete.