North Korea's elite hackers pulled off the biggest crypto theft ever at Binance
'Elite North Korean hackers' blamed for $6.3B Binance hack
TRM Labs attributes the $6.36bn Binance breach to TraderTraitor, North Korea's elite hacking unit, calling it the largest crypto theft on record — roughly four times the 2025 Bybit hack. The attacker moved funds across ten blockchains in about 20 minutes, reportedly after compromising an engineer's laptop. Binance froze withdrawals, says user funds are safe, and claims it will cover all losses; about $3bn has been located so far.
On October 29, 2026, an attacker moved approximately $6.36bn out of Binance wallets on ten blockchains, most of it in about 20 minutes starting at 20:05 UTC. That makes this the largest crypto theft on record, about four times the $1.5bn Bybit hack of February 2025.
- pavlov
After long soul-searching, crypto has settled on two strong use cases:
1) unregulated gambling (a.k.a. "prediction markets"),
2) funding North Korea.
Heartening to see the beautiful web3 vision come alive.
- sigmoid10
>Estimated total impact: ~$6.3B, with ~$3B frozen on-chain so far, in coordination with our blockchain partners
I always find it amusing to read this. Why would you even bother with a decentralized currency that can move freely across the globe when some centralized institutions can always interfere in the way legacy banks used to do with your money? Either they are misguiding you about the core value of their product or their ability to execute traditional interventions in cases of theft. You can't have the conveniences of both at the same time.
- jsw97
Their haul is over 20% of North Korea’s GDP.
- Sol-
How do they launder the coins generally? Given you traceable (most) cryptocurrency is by design, it seems you could sanction anyone who transacts with them? I understand it's likely not that simple, though.
- maxglute
North Korea could have the funniest softpower win if they setup a division to purely pirate and emulate Japanese console video games.