North Korea Denies Involvement in Record $6.3 Billion Binance Hack

North Korea has denied claims that it was behind the record $6.3 billion (£4.7 billion) hack of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, calling the allegations ‘absurd rhetoric’.

Kim Yo-jong, a top North Korean official and the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, said on Tuesday that the accusations are another ‘sinister attempt’ by the US to damage the country's public image.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Secret Service and cyber analysts have said North Korea orchestrated the hack, which has been described as the largest in history. Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Friday that hackers had stolen more than $6 billion.

Blockchain analysts and the FBI have said the attack was led by the state-backed hacking group TraderTraitor, also known as the Lazarus Group. The same group was blamed for the then-record $1.5 billion hack of the Bybit exchange last year.

The FBI has called on industry partners to help block transactions involving cryptocurrency accounts linked to the group.

Kim Yo-jong, director of North Korea's General Affairs Department, said in a statement: “The US has made a trite provocation of linking it with the DPRK again.” She added: “It is a grave political provocation against the DPRK that the US misleads international public opinion as if all the cyber crimes in different parts of the world are our deeds.”

Kim Yo Jong said: “On this occasion, we confirmed Washington's hostile attitude toward the DPRK once again and are closely monitoring a variety of persistent provocations of the US against our state.” She added that it is the consistent policy of the North Korean government to resolutely oppose all sorts of malicious acts in cyberspace.

Binance, meanwhile, said initial checks indicated that an engineer's laptop had been compromised, enabling an attacker to make unauthorised withdrawals. All transactions were suspended after the hack; trading in major cryptocurrencies later resumed after the exchange worked with issuers to freeze assets affected by the hack.

Binance said on Sunday that its customers pulled out more than $3.6 billion of assets from the exchange as it reopened. The company has repeatedly said it would cover all of the losses linked to the attack and that it has so far covered around 95% of the assets stolen in the breach.

Outside experts say North Korea has increasingly turned to cryptocurrency theft and other illicit cyber activities to obtain badly needed foreign currency, helping sustain its struggling economy and fund its nuclear programme in the face of stringent US-led international sanctions and other challenges. In December 2022, South Korea's spy agency estimated that North Korean hackers had stolen 1.5 trillion won ($1.1 billion) in cryptocurrency and other virtual assets over the previous five years.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry said on Monday that North Korea's illicit cyber activities pose an increasing threat to the global digital economy and that Seoul was closely cooperating with the United States and the broader international community to address the threat.

But asked by reporters at a Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, US President Donald Trump suggested investigators were not yet certain that North Korea was involved. “I'm not concerned. We're learning about it,” he said. “We don't know if it's North Korea.”