North Korean hackers steal $6.36 billion from Binance in historic cyberattack
North Korean hackers reportedly stole $6.36 billion from Binance in what is being described as one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in history.
Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has been the target of a cyberattack resulting in losses amounting to billions. According to Binance, assets totaling an estimated $6.3 billion (approx. 5.63 billion euros) have been affected. All deposits and withdrawals have been temporarily suspended.
At the same time, the cryptocurrency exchange assured users on the online platform X that their holdings were “safe” and that it would compensate them for any losses. It went on to say that, together with partners, it had so far frozen affected digital currency holdings worth approximately three billion dollars.
Experts: North Korean Hackers at Work
The analytics firm TRM Labs attributed the attack to North Korean hackers from the TraderTraitor group. According to TRM’s findings, the attackers moved a large portion of the $6.36 billion within 20 minutes. It was reportedly the largest-scale attack ever on a cryptocurrency exchange. According to the report, the most serious attack to date occurred in early 2025, when approximately $1.5 billion in digital currencies was stolen from the Bybit exchange. That attack was also attributed to the North Korean hacker group.
According to TRM, the attackers attempted to prevent stolen digital currency units from being frozen by conducting transactions with those crypto units. They currently held cryptocurrencies worth approximately $2.4 billion that were inaccessible to their issuers.
Until now, the North Korean group Lazarus has been the one to attract the most attention with its cyberattacks on crypto accounts. Even the United Nations has accused the North Korean government of using stolen crypto funds to finance its nuclear program.
