Binance confirms $6.3 billion crypto theft linked to North Korean hackers

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, confirmed on Friday, 30 October, that a security breach resulted in the theft of approximately $6.3 billion, marking the largest digital asset heist in history. The company has frozen roughly $3 billion of the stolen funds on-chain with assistance from industry partners including Tether, Circle, and Arbitrum’s Security Council. The attack, which occurred on Thursday, 29 October, was triggered by a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, according to preliminary findings. This unauthorized access allowed hackers to infiltrate a service container and execute fraudulent withdrawals across ten different blockchains. Despite the scale of the breach, Binance stated there is no evidence that private wallet keys were compromised. Lazarus Group suspected in breach Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs and investigators from Chainalysis have attributed the attack to "TraderTraitor," a subunit of the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group, with high confidence. The group is notorious for high-profile crypto exploits, including a $1.46 billion theft from Dubai-based exchange Bybit in February 2025 and the $625 million Ronin Network hack in 2022. Earlier this week, on Tuesday, 27 October, Binance reported it had successfully blocked separate North Korean attempts to infiltrate its systems via fraudulent job interviews. Binance Co-CEO Yi He announced that while deposits remain functional, the exchange has suspended withdrawals to…