Binance says $US6.3b hit in record crypto hack, North Korean unit suspected
The world's largest crypto exchange has frozen withdrawals and says it will cover all losses after an engineer's laptop was compromised.
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance says about $US6.3 billion ($8.9 billion) in digital assets was hit in a security incident on Thursday, in what ABC News, the BBC and Al Jazeera reported is the largest crypto hack on record. Two blockchain analytics firms have linked the attack to a North Korean hacking unit.
Binance, the world's biggest crypto exchange, suspended deposits and withdrawals and said it would cover all losses. The company said an initial investigation suggested an attacker made unauthorised transactions after gaining access to an engineer's compromised laptop. A spokesperson told ABC News it had "found no evidence of any wallet private key leak". ABC News reported the funds appeared to have been moved from internet-connected "hot wallets", with crypto watchers saying 30 or 40 tokens were affected.
The outlets gave different figures for the amount frozen. Al Jazeera said about $US3 billion, ABC News said more than $US3 billion ($4.2 billion), the BBC said about half the affected assets and The Japan Times reported more than $US2.5 billion. According to the BBC, stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle froze about $US2.4 billion between them, with Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino citing around $US1.6 billion and Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire more than $US800 million.
TRM Labs said it assessed with "high confidence" that the attack was carried out by TraderTraitor, a unit investigators have linked to the Lazarus Group. Chainalysis also said it had "high confidence" in the link. TRM's global head of policy, Ari Redbord, told Al Jazeera the money from theft on this scale "funds weapons proliferation and other destabilising activity". He told the BBC the attacker still held an enormous sum, so tracing and recovery efforts were far from over. Binance did not directly answer BBC questions about North Korea.
Australian experts told local and international media the attack was unprecedented in size. "This is definitely the largest [crypto hack] to date," Nicholas Turnbull, director of Crypto Consulting Australia, told ABC News, adding that the Lazarus Group was a likely focus for investigators. Sean Foley of Macquarie University in Sydney told Al Jazeera a blow to confidence in Binance could hit retail investors, saying assets on a centralised exchange "are only as safe as the exchange itself".
RMIT economics professor Chris Berg told ABC News not all the targeted funds would necessarily be stolen, because stablecoin providers can freeze them and hackers must withdraw through an exchange. He also asked whether the attack "was only possible because of advances in AI".
Bitcoin fell about 5 per cent to below $US77,000, Al Jazeera reported, while the BBC put the drop at more than 4 per cent and said Ethereum and Solana also fell sharply. The previous record theft was the $US1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025, attributed to the Lazarus Group.
Binance.US and Coinbase said they were unaffected. Binance said it was working with law enforcement and would publish a detailed technical post-mortem once investigations are complete.
Sources: Al Jazeera, Binance says $6.3bn stolen in biggest crypto heist in history; BBC News, Crypto giant Binance hit by hack suspected to be largest in history; ABC News, Billions of dollars stolen in largest cryptocurrency hack in history; The Japan Times, Binance freezes more than $2.5 billion in assets amid suspected hack.
