North Korea denies any involvement in the $6.3 billion theft from the cryptocurrency exchange Binance (Binance), calling the accusations by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) a "serious political provocation."
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Kim Yu-ja, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said: “FBI is attempting to portray the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as a ‘cybercrime nation.’ The information obtained indicates that a hacker group supported by North Korea was involved in this incident.”
This statement was issued by the North Korean official news agency, KCNA, and was quoted by the South Korean Yonhap News Agency.
She added, "The United States misleads international public opinion, making it seem as if all cybercrimes occurring around the world are the work of ours. This is a serious political provocation to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea." Kim Jong-chang also stated that Washington is using cybercrime allegations to damage North Korea's reputation. She said that the Trump administration has announced plans to confiscate illegal cryptocurrencies and to use them as strategic reserves, and hinted that the party that ultimately receives these 'so-called stolen cryptocurrencies' might provide clues as to 'who is behind this hacking incident.'"
Before the release of this statement, Binance had been in turmoil for several consecutive days.
On October 29th, Binance stated that it discovered unauthorized withdrawals amounting to approximately $6.3 billion. Initially, the company claimed that the intrusion might have been related to a laptop used by an engineer with the username DevOps, but later indicated that more entry points for the attack had been identified. Binance also mentioned that there is no evidence indicating that the wallet private keys were compromised.
The exchange subsequently temporarily suspended withdrawals and stated that during the investigation of the attack, approximately $3 billion in assets were frozen.
On October 31, FBI stated that North Korea was responsible for this theft and named the related operation “TraderTraitor”, which is a name previously used by this entity to refer to cryptocurrency theft cases involving North Korea. FBI mentioned that it has been observed that the stolen assets are mainly being converted into Ethereum, and warned industry companies to prevent transactions related to the listed wallet addresses.
On November 1st, Binance resumed withdrawals in phases and reported observing a net outflow of approximately $3.64 billion in less than 10 hours.
