North Korea Denies Responsibility for $6.3B Binance Hack
North Korea has rejected US allegations of responsibility for last week's $6.3 billion Binance hack, calling the accusations a political provocation.
In a statement published by state news agency KCNA on November 3, Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, dismissed the claims as "absurd rhetoric and nothing new." She accused Washington of trying to damage North Korea's international reputation and interfere in its internal affairs.
North Korea's Counter-accusation
Kim brought up the US government's stated intention to confiscate illegally obtained cryptocurrency and add recovered assets to a national strategic reserve, suggesting this makes Washington the actual suspect in the theft.
If it carefully examines who will get the large amount of the so-called stolen cryptocurrency when the latter is retrieved, it may get a clue about who is behind the hacking incident.
FBI Investigation
The FBI has attributed the $6.3 billion attack on Binance to the DPRK, with a state-linked actor named TraderTraitor observed converting stolen assets into ETH and moving them through DeFi platforms to obscure their origin.
Other investigators including TRM Labs and Chainalysis also tied the heist to the same group. On-chain monitors have observed portions of the stolen money being moved through protocols like THORChain and Relay, significantly increasing their daily revenues.
Binance had temporarily halted withdrawals after the hack but has since resumed them, with users withdrawing over $4 billion immediately after the green light while depositing just over $1 billion.
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