FBI confirms North Korea's role in $6 billion Binance hack, asks DeFi community to block BTC, ETH, SOL addresses - CoinDesk
The FBI has confirmed that North Korea's TraderTraitor hacking group was responsible for the $6 billion theft from Binance, urging the crypto community to block hundreds of addresses linked to the stolen funds.
The FBI confirmed on Saturday that North Korea's TraderTraitor hacking group was behind the breach of Binance, resulting in the theft of over $6 billion in cryptocurrencies. The agency has identified hundreds of addresses currently holding or previously holding funds from the hack and is asking the decentralized finance (DeFi) community to block transactions from these addresses.
According to the FBI statement, the hackers have been converting the stolen funds primarily into ether (ETH). The agency expects the attackers to continue laundering the funds through swap services and other DeFi tools in the coming weeks.
Addresses to Block
The FBI listed over 600 Ethereum addresses, just under 20 Bitcoin addresses, and a single Solana address in its notice. The agency urged private sector entities including THORNode operators, RPC node operators, instant exchanges, DeFi services, blockchain analytics firms, and other virtual asset service providers to block transactions with or derived from these addresses.
Scale of Laundering
While the FBI listed several hundred addresses, Chainalysis CEO Jonathan Levin stated that the attackers have already used "thousands of addresses" and anticipates this number will grow to "tens of thousands" as the funds move through a broader money laundering network.
They have too much money for their trusted laundering venues to handle. So the money will flow to a wider network of services, like bridges, instant exchanges, and swappers due to a wider set of money launderers.
Response and Recovery
Stablecoin issuers have frozen over $2.4 billion of the stolen funds, though attackers continue laundering much of the remainder. Binance announced it had replenished 90% of the stolen cryptocurrencies and planned to resume customer withdrawals on Sunday.
U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged the hack when asked by a White House reporter on Saturday, stating "we're learning about it" and that his administration would "talk to North Korea about it."
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