North Korea Denies FBI Accusation Over $6 Billion Binance Hack as It Tests Cruise Missiles

North Korea on Monday denied FBI claims that it was behind the $6 billion theft from crypto platform Binance, while also conducting tests of strategic cruise missiles. For payment and crypto providers, the point is not the missile launch; it is that a state-linked hack allegation against a major exchange can spill straight into liquidity, market prices, and scrutiny of the rails used to move stolen funds.

1. North Korean state media KCNA said the launch involved strategic cruise missiles equipped with a new warhead "capable of reducing to ashes a target area of 5 to 6 hectares." The missile tests came shortly after Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, called the FBI allegations a "serious political provocation."
2. On Saturday, the FBI said a North Korea-linked hacking group called TraderTraitor was behind the attack. The same group was blamed for a R$ 1.5 billion theft on the Bybit platform in February last year, according to the report.
3. Specialists quoted by AFP said this week’s incident could be the biggest crypto theft in history, with an amount equivalent to "almost a quarter of North Korea’s estimated annual GDP," according to Michael Bosack, founding director of the Parley Policy Institute.
4. Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, and news of the cyberattack triggered a sharp fall in the prices of most major digital currencies on Friday. Kim Yo Jong dismissed the FBI claim as "absurd rhetoric and nothing new," referring to previous U.S. accusations that Pyongyang was behind last year’s major cyberattack on Bybit.
5. Bosack said North Korea was likely pushed to respond because of the "level of international attention the incident drew." In his view, the denial was meant to preserve the channels through which Pyongyang can continue laundering and using cryptocurrencies; if outside parties start closing those doors under international pressure, the stolen crypto stops being useful for the regime’s short-term priorities.

The attack also prompted South Korea to call for stricter protections for its digital infrastructure against cyberattacks. President Lee Jae Myung said that not long ago even the world’s largest crypto trading platform suffered astronomical losses from a cyberattack believed to have been carried out by a hacking group, adding that digital intrusion techniques are becoming more intelligent, sophisticated, and common with the development of artificial intelligence.