WorldPosted at: Oct 31 2026 5:57PM


North Korean hackers suspected of $6.3bn Binance cryptocurrency heist

Pyongyang, Oct 31 (UNI) The suspected North Korean hackers behind the $6.3bn theft from cryptocurrency exchange Binance appear to have combined established hacking techniques with unprecedented speed and automation, raising concerns that artificial intelligence could further strengthen Pyongyang's cyber operations.
Binance said late Thursday that its blockchain partners had frozen at least $3bn of the stolen assets on-chain.
The company believes the attackers gained initial access by compromising an engineer's laptop, alongside exploiting other security vulnerabilities.
Several blockchain investigation firms have linked the attack to TraderTraitor, a hacking group associated with North Korea's Lazarus Group.
Binance co-chief executive Richard Teng said on Friday that the attackers had also deployed a "self-destruct mechanism that destroyed tooling and traces" as the operation unfolded, complicating efforts to investigate the breach.
"This was a complex attack," Teng said in a video posted on social media.
North Korean government-backed hackers have spent more than a decade conducting financial thefts and disruptive cyberattacks, increasingly turning cryptocurrency theft into an industrial-scale operation.
In 2016, hackers attempted to steal nearly $1bn from Bangladesh's central bank, successfully making off with $81m. A year later, North Korea was blamed for the WannaCry ransomware attack, which disrupted hundreds of thousands of computers across more than 150 countries.
In recent years, the country has increasingly targeted cryptocurrency exchanges, with digital assets offering opportunities for rapid cross-border transfers and laundering, although blockchain transactions can also leave traces for investigators.
TraderTraitor was also linked to last year's $1.5bn theft from the Bybit cryptocurrency exchange, previously the largest crypto heist on record.
Experts say the group's operations are becoming faster and more sophisticated.
Eric Jardine, head of research at Chainalysis, told Axios that North Korean hackers were increasingly dominating the value stolen in cryptocurrency attacks.
A Chainalysis research report published on Friday found that the attackers transferred billions of dollars in as little as 20 minutes. Investigators also identified unusually rapid laundering and destruction of evidence, suggesting extensive automation throughout the operation.
Researchers at TRM Labs found that preparations for the attack had begun just 36 hours before it was carried out.
"There were transactions happening with a frequency and a scale that just meant there could not have been someone involved in the approval of these," Jardine said. "It had to have been done by a computer."
Social engineering and automation have become central to recent North Korean cyber operations, according to Vijay Balasubramaniyan, chief executive and co-founder of Pindrop Security.
He said advances in AI-powered audio and video tools had helped North Korean operatives expand fraudulent IT recruitment schemes, through which they pose as legitimate job applicants to secure positions at American companies.
Balasubramaniyan said North Korean applicants accounted for one in every 343 applications last year. Across Pindrop's customer base, the figure has risen to one in 47 this year.
"It's just not AI, it's the scale of AI — you have so many AI choices that the number of such tools is crazy, the cost is so cheap and it's becoming an ecosystem," he said.
Investigators are still working to trace the remaining stolen funds.
Jardine said law enforcement agencies and blockchain investigators could potentially recover the other half if the assets reach specific cryptocurrency exchange infrastructure and operators act quickly enough to freeze them.
"It's still early days," he added.
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