# TRM Labs Policy Chief Calls for Offensive Cyber Operations After Binance Theft By Simon Yoon Canonical URL: https://www.tokenpost.com/news/technology/51768 Published: 2026-11-08T19:38:44.000Z Updated: 2026-11-08T19:38:44.000Z Section: Technology > Ari Redbord warned that the coordinated response may do little to deter future attacks while potential payoffs remain high. He urged governments to target laundering networks and banks used to cash out stolen crypto. TRM Labs policy chief Ari Redbord urged governments to conduct offensive cyber operations against North Korean hacking networks, arguing that the estimated $6.3 billion Binance theft leaves attackers with a potentially enormous payoff. TRM Labs has attributed the [Oct. 29 theft from Binance]() to a North Korean hacking group. Binance’s Nov. 3 postmortem said attackers posed as recruiters, planted malware on an engineer’s work computer and used a compromised internal artificial intelligence tool to reach its wallet-signing service. The industry response focused on immobilizing funds before hackers could move them offchain. Stablecoin issuers froze about $2.67 billion in tokens. Tether froze 971.1 million USDt (USDT) 37 minutes after the main sweep. Redbord called the coordinated response unprecedented but warned it may do little to deter future attacks while the payoff remains high. He said the theft equaled roughly one-third of North Korea’s gross domestic product and about half of the $12.5 billion stolen by state-backed hackers since 2017. Recovering even $1 billion of the Binance funds would still be a significant payoff for attackers, he argued. TRM’s Beacon Network, an intelligence-sharing system launched in 2025, helped firms coordinate to immobilize funds before hackers moved them offchain, Redbord said. He normally sees a few alerts on the network each day; in the days after the theft, he saw hundreds, or perhaps as many as 1,000. Redbord urged governments to target laundering networks and banks hackers use to convert stolen cryptocurrency. “Every time North Korea hacks, we should be hacking them back,” he said. He also called on law enforcement and compliance teams to use AI to find and patch vulnerabilities as quickly as hackers exploit them. The distance between attackers and defenders is widening, driven in part by hackers’ early adoption of advanced technologies such as AI. ## Links in this article - [Oct. 29 theft from Binance](https://www.tokenpost.com/news/technology/47181)