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UNIKim Yo-jong denies North Korea role in $6.3bn Binance hack
Kim Jong-un's sister has rejected the FBI's claim that North Korean hackers carried out the $6.3bn Binance theft, calling the accusation a political provocation. Blockchain investigators have linked the attack to TraderTraitor.
Why it matters: The theft is the largest crypto hack on record, and the dispute leaves the attribution to North Korea contested even as exchanges and stablecoin issuers freeze billions in traced funds.
Key points
- Kim Yo-jong called the FBI's attribution of the 29 Oct attack a "grave political provocation", per KCNA via Yonhap.
- The FBI named TraderTraitor, tied to the Lazarus Group, as responsible; TRM Labs, Chainalysis and ZachXBT also linked the theft to North Korean hackers.
- Elliptic traced the funds through about 12,000 wallets on 11 blockchains in under four days, with more than 40,000 transactions.
North Korea has denied involvement in the $6.3bn Binance hack, with Kim Yo-jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong-un, rejecting the FBI's attribution of the 29 Oct attack to North Korean hackers. According to Yonhap, citing a statement carried by the state-run KCNA, she described Washington's finding as a "grave political provocation" and said it was meant to damage the country's reputation and infringe its sovereignty in cyberspace.
The FBI said on 31 October that TraderTraitor, a state-sponsored operation tied to the Lazarus Group, stole more than $6bn in digital assets from Binance. Blockchain intelligence firms reached similar conclusions: TRM Labs attributed the attack to TraderTraitor with high confidence, ZachXBT named the Lazarus Group, and Chainalysis linked the stolen funds to a September attack on Bitget.
Kim also suggested Washington might have motives tied to recovering the assets, pointing to a pledge to confiscate illegally stolen cryptocurrency for a strategic reserve. She offered no evidence for the implication. Yonhap noted that her direct involvement in a hacking dispute was unusual, though Pyongyang has repeatedly denied crypto thefts blamed on its hackers.
Binance initially pointed to a compromised employee laptop, later found further breaches, said no wallet private keys leaked and pledged to cover losses. Binance said almost $3bn was frozen by stablecoin issuers and exchanges, and Tether said it froze over $1.5bn of USDT within 30 minutes.
What to watch: Kim said Pyongyang is watching Washington's actions and could reconsider parts of its response to what it calls continued US hostility.
Live updates on NewsFeeds:AltcoinsDesk editor: Keshav Aggarwal (accountable for this page; this summary was not edited by hand)
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