North Korea denies involvement in Binance hack, criticizes FBI probe - ABC News - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos
North Korea on Tuesday denied its involvement in the recent cryptocurrency heist at Binance, dismissing as “a trite provocation” a U.S. announcement that North Korean hackers were behind the incident.
Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, said Friday that hackers stole more than $6 billion in what appears to be the largest cryptocurrency heist on record. The FBI later said the theft was orchestrated by North Korean hackers, attributing the attack to a hacking group known as TraderTraitor, which was also behind a $1.5 billion hack of the Bybit exchange last year.
The theft occurred as North Korea has ramped up its weapons tests in a likely bid to increase its leverage in potential diplomacy with the U.S. On Tuesday, North Korea said it tested a new cluster warhead for strategic cruise missiles.
This is not the first time that the U.S. has attempted to spread misunderstanding of the DPRK in the international community, blindly linking the DPRK with the ‘cyber crime’ incidents whenever they occur on an international scale.
Kim Yo Jong called the FBI announcement “a trite provocation” and “an absurd rhetoric.” She added, “On this occasion, we confirmed Washington’s hostile attitude toward the DPRK once again and are closely monitoring a variety of persistent provocations of the U.S. against our state.”
State-sponsored cyberattacks
North Korea has been linked to numerous major cyberattacks in past years, including a 2013 campaign that paralyzed the servers of South Korean financial institutions, the 2014 hacking of Sony Pictures, and the WannaCry malware attack of 2017.
Although the country has mostly denied involvement, North Korea has increasingly turned to cryptocurrency theft and other illicit cyber activities as a source of badly needed foreign currency. This helps sustain its struggling economy and fund its nuclear program in the face of stringent U.S.-led international sanctions and other challenges.
In December 2022, South Korea’s spy agency estimated that North Korean hackers had stolen 1.5 trillion won ($1.1 billion) in cryptocurrency and other virtual assets over the previous five years.
International response
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that North Korea’s illicit cyber activities pose an increasing threat to the global digital economy and that Seoul was closely cooperating with the United States and the broader international community to address the threat.
Asked by reporters later during a Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump suggested investigators weren’t yet certain that North Korea was involved. “I’m not concerned. We’re learning about it,” Trump said of the case. “We don’t know if it’s North Korea,” he added, though saying investigators could still determine that it was.
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