FBI Attributes More Than $6 Billion Binance Theft to North Korea

The FBI attributed a theft of more than $6 billion from Binance around Oct. 29 to North Korea and urged crypto services to block hundreds of wallet addresses linked to the operation.

The FBI identified the malicious North Korean network activity as TraderTraitor. The FBI, the U.S. Secret Service and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation division said the attackers had mainly converted the stolen assets into Ether (ETH) and expect further laundering through decentralized finance (DeFi) and instant-exchange services.

The FBI urged THORChain node operators, remote procedure call (RPC) node operators, instant-exchange platforms, DeFi services and blockchain analytics firms to block transactions involving the identified addresses. It published hundreds of related addresses spanning Ether, Bitcoin (BTC) and Solana (SOL).

The FBI announcement follows an earlier Trump statement that investigators were examining a possible North Korean role in the theft.