North Korean hackers blamed for $6.3 billion theft from Binance

Analysts are pinning blame on North Korean state-sponsored hackers for the 6 billion US dollars reportedly stolen from the wallet infrastructure of world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission Michael Selig affirms they have the ability to trace the heist in the blockchain.

Exchanges and investigators are racing to freeze and track down the 6.3 billion US dollars involved in the record heist that has rattled the cryto market.

Binance's founder, Zhao Changpeng, confirms on social media this might be the largest hack of its kind in terms of dollar value.

The company says deposits were unaffected but it has temporarily halted customer withdrawals on Thursday that are expected to resume in the next day or two.

Roughly 3 billion dollars of the affected assets have been frozen.

Initial investigation pointed out the attack was not carried out by one person and may be linked to a compromised laptop and malicious software designed to delete evidence of its activity as it went along.

Promising to cover all hacked losses through its company funds, Binance's co-CEO Richard Teng says the attackers used complex tactics, including a "self-destruct mechanism," "making it more difficult for us to trace and investigate."

Further review has uncovered additional points of security breach.

US-based blockchain intelligence firm TRM and blockchain analysis company Chainalysis both attribute the incident with high confidence to TraderTraitor, the North Korea's elite hacking unit previously blamed for the Bybit theft.

TRM says the attackers were able to move about 6.36 billion dollars out of Binance wallets on ten blockchains, most of it in about 20 minutes beginning late on Thursday, mirroring the features of earlier North Korea-linked heists.

When asked about a potential North Korean link, US President Donald Trump remarks Washington is looking into the matter and is in communication with Binance. "We don't know. We're looking at that, the hack with Binance."

"Well they say they're going to get it back and they're saying they're guaranteeing it or something. They are. But it was a hack, that's the problem. They say they have it pretty much under control, we'll see," he says.

TRM's global head of policy Ari Redbord alleges North Korea is laundering the proceeds to convert these funds from crypto to cash as fast as possible. "This is like actually full on attacking the crypto ecosystem at a pretty unprecedented speed and scale. I think the thing that gives me hope is that we saw the biggest hack in history yesterday. But we also saw the biggest and fastest response ever."

Binance announces on Saturday it plans to run its first Proof of Reserves snapshot in 12 hours and have the results ready on Monday.