FBI names North Korea in Binance theft, two days after the largest crypto hack on record

The Binance theft now accounts for 68.1% of the $9.34 billion in crypto hacks that US government statements attribute to North Korea. The loss, recorded at $6.36 billion, is the largest crypto hack on record. On October 31, 2026, the FBI said North Korea was responsible.

Before this attribution, the 11 hacks pinned on North Korea totalled $2.98 billion. The largest of them was Bybit, at $1.40 billion on February 21, 2025.

The fastest attribution yet

The theft happened on or about October 29, 2026, and the FBI named North Korea two days later. It took five days to attribute Bybit and 22 days to attribute the Ronin Bridge theft of March 23, 2022.

The FBI puts the theft at "more than $6 billion USD in virtual assets". It credits it to the North Korean activity it calls "TraderTraitor". The FBI did not say how the attackers got into the exchange.

Laundering under way

The FBI, USSS and IRS-CI say they have seen TraderTraitor actors converting stolen assets mainly into Ether. The FBI expects the funds to be laundered further through DeFi and instant swap services. Its alert lists 608 Ethereum addresses that hold or have held assets from the theft.

The three agencies asked private firms to block transactions with or derived from those addresses. These include THORNode operators, RPC node operators, instant exchanges, DeFi services and blockchain analytics firms.

Where it sits

With Binance added, the 12 hacks attributed to North Korea make up 36.9% of the $25.31 billion in known crypto hack losses since 2019. The list goes back to the $49.3 million Upbit theft of November 27, 2019. US, Japanese and South Korean authorities attributed that one only on January 14, 2025.

Sources

1. FBI: North Korea Responsible for $6 Billion+ Binance Attack (October 31, 2026)
2. Bitminer.io failures ledger

By The Assayer, the Bitminer.io house byline. Written by AI from the sources above and checked automatically. No person reviewed it before publication. How we work.

Every crypto theft the US attributes to North Korea

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