North Korea denies role in $6.4 billion Binance hack after FBI points to TraderTraitor

Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has rejected U.S. accusations that the country was behind the $6.4 billion Binance hack, calling the FBI’s attribution a political provocation. For crypto and PSP teams, the useful part is not the denial; it is the attribution chain, the wallet addresses, and the fact that law enforcement is already asking services to block transactions tied to them.

1. In a statement published Tuesday by state news KCNA, Kim Yo Jong said the U.S. was “trite” to link the incident to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea again. She accused Washington of using North Korea as a default explanation whenever a major cybercrime happens and said the FBI was trying to brand the DPRK as a “cyber criminal state.”
2. The FBI said the Oct. 29 Binance theft was carried out by TraderTraitor, which it described as a North Korean hacking operation. The agency identified cryptocurrency addresses associated with the stolen funds and urged exchanges and blockchain services to block transactions involving those addresses.
3. Blockchain investigators have also linked the theft to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Elliptic said it traced the stolen funds through thousands of wallets and found evidence of automated laundering, but no proof that artificial intelligence agents were directing the transactions.
4. The case sits inside a longer U.S. enforcement pattern. In 2019, the Treasury sanctioned Lazarus Group, Bluenorff and Andariel, saying they were controlled by North Korea’s military intelligence agency. Two years later, the Justice Department charged three North Korean military hackers with trying to steal or extort more than $1.3 billion from banks and businesses, including cryptocurrency companies.
5. The Treasury also sanctioned the cryptocurrency mixer Sinbad in 2023, calling it “a key money-laundering tool of the OFAC-designated Lazarus Group,” used by Korean hackers to launder proceeds from the $620 million Axie Infinity theft and other attacks. If the FBI’s attribution on Binance stands, this would be a much larger crypto theft than the earlier cases tied to the same cluster.