More than $6 billion in digital assets was stolen from crypto exchange Binance, the FBI said Saturday in an online alert blaming North Korea. The bureau calls this kind of North Korean hacking TraderTraitor.
Working with the U.S. Secret Service and IRS Criminal Investigation, the FBI has seen the hackers convert most of the stolen funds into ether, or ETH, according to the alert.
More laundering is expected. The bureau said the assets will likely be run through decentralized finance, or DeFi, platforms and instant swap services as the hackers prepare them for later stages.
Request to block wallets
The three agencies are asking crypto businesses to refuse transactions involving addresses the hackers are using to move the money. Their appeal covers THORNode and RPC node operators, instant exchanges, DeFi services, blockchain analytics firms and other virtual asset service providers.
It applies to funds sent from those wallets and to anything derived from them. The alert lists the addresses.
Anyone with information can contact a local FBI field office or the bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.
Binance’s account
Binance has estimated the hit at about $6.3 billion, Virginia Times reported Friday. Its early investigation pointed to a compromised laptop that belonged to one of its DevOps engineers. That access let the attacker reach a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawals, the exchange said.
Roughly $3 billion of the affected assets has been frozen on-chain, Binance said. The company has also set aside more than $6.34 billion of its own money to cover the damage. Withdrawals were paused during security checks. Deposits weren’t affected.
Earlier attributions
Two blockchain intelligence firms had already pointed to the same group. TRM Labs attributed the attack to TraderTraitor with high confidence, and Chainalysis said the group was likely responsible.
Their loss estimates differ slightly. TRM put the total at about $6.36 billion, while Chainalysis said $6.4 billion. TRM also noted that the FBI had previously blamed TraderTraitor for the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025.
Binance has promised a detailed technical post-mortem once its investigation is complete.
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