North Korea Suspected in $6.3 Billion Binance Hack, Largest Crypto Theft on Record

Hackers stole an estimated $6.3 billion from Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, in what analysts are calling the biggest crypto heist in history. The theft, which reportedly occurred in roughly 20 minutes, sent Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BNB sharply lower and prompted Binance to suspend withdrawals while deposits continue to operate normally. The exchange pledged to cover all customer losses from its SAFU reserve and company funds, and said withdrawals are expected to resume within 45 hours.

Binance CEO Richard Teng clarified that the attack went beyond a single compromised device and was not a simple "one-click" exploit. Initial investigation pointed to a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop as an entry point, but the company subsequently identified additional breach points, indicating a more complex, multi-vector intrusion.

Blockchain intelligence firms Chainalysis and TRM Labs attributed the attack with high confidence to TraderTraitor, the North Korean state-sponsored hacking unit previously linked by the FBI to the $1.5 billion Bybit breach. Chainalysis co-founder Jonathan Levin placed the total slightly higher at $6.4 billion. On-chain investigator ZachXBT found that funds stolen from Binance were commingled with proceeds from an earlier Bitget hack, reinforcing the connection to prior attacks also linked to North Korea, including those on Bybit and KelpDAO.

Approximately $3 billion in affected assets has been frozen on-chain so far, with frozen assets spanning USDT, USDC, RLUSD, WBETH, Tether Gold, and others. Ripple separately froze $200 million in RLUSD in response to the breach. Analysts at Fundstrat Global Advisors said the incident does not appear to pose a significant solvency risk for Binance, though the scale of the attack has renewed scrutiny over security practices across the broader crypto industry.