Blockchain investigators say North Korea’s Lazarus Group is the likely culprit behind the massive hack of Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, with several sleuths and analysis firms pointing to the state-sanctioned hacking squad.
Binance (Credits: CoinDesk)
Binance Hack: Blockchain Sleuths Blame North Korea’s Lazarus Group
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT said in a post on X that the attacker was “likely Lazarus,” while blockchain analytics firm TRM published a blog post saying the North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor, a subunit of Lazarus, was likely behind the hack, with what TRM described as “high confidence” in that assessment.
Ido Ben-Natan, the co-founder and CEO of crypto security firm Blockaid, said the tactics and level of sophistication seen so far are consistent with operations seen from North Korea-linked actors. Lazarus is a state-sanctioned hacking squad known for stealing money via cyber attacks to fund the regime’s illicit weapons program, and has been tied to several major crypto hacks this year, including incidents at Kelp DAO, Bitget and Drift.
One investigator cautioned that attribution was not definitive yet, noting the Binance hackers moved and sold stolen funds more slowly than Lazarus and other DPRK groups usually do. Binance said in an update that it had traced the attack vector to a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop.
What Binance Has Said About the Losses
Binance’s preliminary findings put losses at about $6.3 billion, with roughly $3 billion in assets frozen. The exchange has said it will reimburse users in full. Estimates from on-chain firms vary widely, from around $2.8 billion to nearly $6 billion, but if the higher figures are confirmed, this would be the largest crypto theft on record.
Also Read: Binance Hack Drained Wallets Backing Customer Assets, Reserve Data Shows — ETH Backing Slips to 94% | Why Intel’s Stock Is Sinking Toward Its Worst Drop in Two Years
Source: CoinDesk — read the full story there.
