North Korea Denies the FBI's Blame for the Record $6.3 Billion Binance Hack

North Korea has rejected claims by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that its state-sponsored hackers carried out the record $6.3 billion theft from the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. In a Nov. 2 statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, Kim Yo Jong — a senior ruling party official and the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — called the U.S. assertion "an absurd rhetoric and nothing new," said her government resolutely opposes malicious acts in cyberspace, and accused Washington of a grave political provocation.

The denial answers the FBI's Oct. 31 alert, which said North Korea was responsible for the theft on or about Oct. 29 and named the activity TraderTraitor, a unit also associated with the Lazarus Group. Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said on Oct. 30 that it had a high degree of confidence in North Korea's responsibility, and the FBI urged crypto businesses to block transactions with or derived from the addresses listed in its alert.

Binance estimated the loss at approximately $6.3 billion in its Oct. 30 update and said roughly $3 billion had been frozen onchain at that point. In a Nov. 2 recovery update, Binance said it had covered approximately 95% of the impacted amount. The customer withdrawals that followed the exchange's resumption of transactions were covered by this station earlier today (SQ-20261102-007); this file is the North Korean government's response, which supplies no evidence for its counter-suggestion, reported by Cointelegraph, that Washington could be behind the theft.