{"id":229209,"date":"2026-10-30T13:03:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T13:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/north-korean-group-blamed-for-6-3bn-binance-hack-in-biggest-ever-crypto-heist-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T13:03:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T13:03:06","slug":"north-korean-group-blamed-for-6-3bn-binance-hack-in-biggest-ever-crypto-heist-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/north-korean-group-blamed-for-6-3bn-binance-hack-in-biggest-ever-crypto-heist-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"North Korean group blamed for $6.3bn Binance hack in biggest ever crypto heist – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cryptocurrency exchange scrambles to freeze affected assets, with about $3bn located so far, and says it will cover losses
Tell us: have you been affected by the Binance hack?<\/a>
Business live \u2013 latest updates<\/a>
The world\u2019s largest cryptocurrency exchange has been hit by an industry-record $6.3bn (\u00a34.7bn) hack, with experts identifying North Korea<\/a> as the likely culprit.
Binance has scrambled to freeze the affected assets, with about $3bn located so far. The company gave no update on the other $3.3bn as Binance\u2019s co-founder Yi He said the company would cover \u201call hacking losses\u201d.
Analysts attributed the attack to North Korean state-backed hackers. North Korea has a history of crypto hacking and was behind the theft of approximately $1.5bn in virtual assets from a Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange last year, according to the FBI, in what was the previous record crypto heist.
TRM, a crypto analysis firm, blamed the attack with \u201chigh confidence\u201d on TraderTraitor, North Korea\u2019s elite hacking unit. Chainalysis, another analysis outfit, also attributed the heist to TraderTraitor.
Binance did not explicitly confirm that funds had been stolen, although TRM and Chainalysis claimed more than $6bn had been taken. The company said its teams were \u201cworking around the clock\u201d to resolve the problem.
An initial investigation suggested the breach may have started with a hacked laptop belonging to one of Binance\u2019s engineers, which let an attacker gain access to one of its systems and \u2060make unauthorised withdrawals, Binance said.
Binance, which allows users to buy, sell and trade digital assets, has 335 million registered users globally and had about $162.8bn in assets under custody as of the exchange\u2019s 2025 annual report.
Richard Teng, a co-chief executive of Binance, said: \u201cBottom line \u2013 your money is safe, and we\u2019re covering every loss.\u201d
The company said in a statement: \u201cAs a precaution, all deposits and withdrawals are temporarily suspended while our security teams conduct checks, secure wallet infrastructure and trace affected assets, with the close support of our law enforcement and industry partners.\u201d
Markets reacted immediately in early Asian trading on Friday, and bitcoin \u2013 the most popular crypto asset by far \u2013 dropped more than 3% to a six-week low of $76,368.
Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, who in 2023 pleaded guilty to a felony in the US related to his failure to prevent money laundering on the platform and stepped down as CEO. Donald Trump pardoned him<\/a> in 2025.
Zhao posted to X on Thursday: \u201cUser funds are safe!\u201d but added that the incident \u201cdoes look like a hack on Binance\u201d. He added that while he did not manage Binance any more, \u201cas a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered\u201d.
In a post on X, Binance reiterated that it was working \u201cto trace, freeze and recover additional funds\u201d, and signed off: \u201cWe will weather this storm. Thank you for the support.\u201d
Aravind \u200cSrinivasan, the head of the large crypto market maker GSR\u2019s systematic \u200cOTC business, said: \u201cIt\u2019s the biggest hack in history.\u201d
Beyond the potential loss of assets, the security breach was likely to have wider ramifications for crypto, which had already been under pressure lately because of higher US interest rates and softer demand from \u200cexchange-traded fund buyers, analysts said.
\u201cIt may further dampen risk appetite and prompt investors to reassess the safety of assets held on centralised exchanges,\u201d said Tim Sun, a senior researcher at HashKey Group, based in Hong Kong.
Binance runs a secure asset fund for users, which is a reserve held entirely in \u200cbitcoin that is intended to protect user assets in cases of security breaches, according to its website.
Bernardo Brites, the CEO of Trace Finance, a payments and stablecoin infrastructure company, said: \u201cIt\u2019s becoming very hard to counter hacks as AI can find vulnerabilities faster than you can fix them.\u201d
The stablecoin issuer Tether said it had frozen nearly $1.57bn in assets linked to the incident, while Circle froze more than $800m.
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World Liberty Financial, a crypto company linked to Trump and his family, said on Thursday it had worked with the cryptocurrency custodian BitGo to freeze funds stolen in what it described as a Binance hack.
Binance\u2019s Yi said $27m in stablecoins and about $2m worth of World Liberty tokens had been frozen.
The incident adds to a string of crypto thefts. Last year attackers stole $2.9bn worth of cryptocurrency across almost 150 attacks, according to TRM. In September the cryptocurrency exchange Bitget \u200csaid roughly $350m in crypto had \u200bbeen stolen from its platform, underscoring the industry\u2019s vulnerability \u200bto hackers.
Authorities have warned that organised crime groups are increasingly using cryptocurrencies to move funds across borders outside the traditional financial system.
Binance.US, a separate cryptocurrency exchange, said it was not affected by the security incident.
The UK\u2019s financial watchdogs are monitoring the hack for any potential fallout.
While crypto companies are not regulated in the UK, the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will be keeping an eye on any banks, insurers or fintechs that are exposed to Binance, and how that could ultimately hurt the UK\u2019s wider financial system.
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A spokesperson for the FCA said: \u201cWhile Binance wasn\u2019t registered with the FCA to provide crypto services in the UK, we\u2019re aware of the reported incident and engaging with them to understand the impact.\u201d
The Bank of England is also monitoring the hack, according to a source familiar with the matter. However, it is understood there are no active concerns. The Bank declined to comment.
Coinbase said it was unaffected and was monitoring the situation.
In an unrelated incident earlier on Thursday, the prediction market operator Polymarket temporarily halted trading after a security incident<\/a> involving a third-party provider. It later resumed trading and said it would fully reimburse affected traders.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report<\/em><\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cryptocurrency exchange scrambles to freeze affected assets, with about $3bn located so far, and says it will cover lossesTell us: have you been affected by the Binance hack?Business live \u2013 latest updatesThe world\u2019s largest cryptocurrency exchange has been hit by an industry-record $6.3bn (\u00a34.7bn) hack, with experts identifying North Korea as the likely culprit.Binance has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":229210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}