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North Korea Denies Role in $6.4 Billion Binance Hack After FBI Points to TraderTraitor

Kim Yo Jong called the FBI finding a political provocation, days after the bureau blamed the North Korean hacking operation TraderTraitor for the October 29 theft from Binance. The exchange says it has covered most customer losses and frozen part of the stolen funds.

By admin Nov. 3, 2026 · 7:54 AM ET 2 min read

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North Korea denied on Monday that it was behind the $6.4 billion theft from cryptocurrency exchange Binance, calling the finding by the Federal Bureau of Investigation a political provocation. Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said in a statement published by state news agency KCNA that Washington was trying to brand North Korea as a “cyber criminal state.”

“It is a grave political provocation against the DPRK that the U.S. misleads the international public opinion as if all the cybercrimes in different parts of the world are our deeds,” she said, according to CoinDesk.

The FBI said on October 31 that TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking operation, was responsible for the theft on or about October 29, and urged cryptocurrency services to block transactions involving wallet addresses linked to the stolen funds. Blockchain investigators had linked the theft to North Korea’s Lazarus Group before the bureau’s announcement, according to CoinDesk. The FBI also linked the $1.5 billion theft from crypto exchange Bybit in February 2025 to TraderTraitor, and Kim challenged that attribution as well.

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Frozen funds and customer withdrawals

Binance said it worked with other exchanges and stablecoin providers to freeze about $2.8 billion after the hack was first detected on Thursday evening, according to the New York Post. The company then paused withdrawals and said it would cover all losses in full.

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Since withdrawals resumed on Sunday, Binance has recorded more than $4.7 billion in outflows, a spokesperson told the Post on Monday. The company said that figure was about 3 percent of its total assets and that withdrawal levels were already returning to normal. Binance also said it has covered about 95 percent of the losses from company funds, buying replacement tokens for the top 10 affected coins, including bitcoin, ether, solana and USDT, and that the remaining 5 percent involved tokens that take longer to source.

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Why the attribution is disputed

The FBI has not publicly released its full forensic findings on the Binance attack, according to CoinDesk, though its October 31 alert listed wallet addresses it says are controlled by or connected to North Korean hackers. Vasily Vidmanov, chief operating officer and head of investigations at AMLBot, told CoinDesk that onchain analysis can link wallets to one actor but cannot prove nationality or state sponsorship, and that the evidence for the North Korea attribution is cumulative. He said the movement of the money next, including whether it follows the laundering route seen in earlier thefts attributed to North Korea, would answer the denial better than any statement.

CoinDesk said it has contacted the FBI, Binance and blockchain analytics firms Elliptic and TRM Labs for comment on Kim’s statement.

Reporting based on coverage by CoinDesk and the New York Post.

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