About $6.36 billion, roughly 1 trillion yen, in crypto assets was stolen from Binance on Oct. 29, the world's largest crypto exchange. The FBI identified the North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor as responsible on Oct. 31.
The group is also suspected in attacks on the Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin and on Bybit, a global exchange. North Korea, squeezed for foreign currency by heavy international sanctions, has turned to cyberattacks as a way to raise money.
Blockchain analysis firm TRM Labs estimates that North Korean hackers have stolen about $12.8 billion, roughly 2.02 trillion yen, in crypto assets in about 100 attacks since 2017. Losses this year have reached about $7.4 billion, and North Korean attacks account for about 85% of all crypto hacking losses worldwide.
North Korea's cyber force now sits alongside its nuclear and missile programs as a major variable threatening international security.
Most of the money gone in 20 minutes
The most striking part of the Binance case is speed: the attackers took most of the funds in just 20 minutes. Ordinary hacking cases take considerable time before an intrusion is noticed and the damage confirmed, but this attack moved faster than the exchange could respond.
Investigators have pointed to the possible compromise of the transaction-signing system for the exchange's hot wallet, an internet-connected wallet. If so, the target was not an individual account but the exchange's own asset-management infrastructure.
A name the US put out in 2022
The FBI named TraderTraitor as the force behind the attack. The name first became public in April 2022, when the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Treasury Department released it while tracking the operations of North Korea's state-backed hackers. The US government said at the time that the group had been active since at least 2020.
The group has mainly approached employees of crypto-related companies posing as recruiters or investors, getting them to run malicious files and so break into internal systems.