FBI · North Korea · The Guardian Technology
Hackers behind $6.3bn Binance heist ‘leveraged malware and bogus job interviews’
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The hackers behind the $6.3bn (£4.7bn) Binance heist used bogus job interviews, malicious software and an internal AI tool, the company has revealed.
Key facts
- Binance said $2.85bn of the $6.34bn drained from cryptowallets in the attack had been frozen or intercepted
- The hackers behind the $6.3bn (£4.7bn) Binance heist used bogus job interviews, malicious software and an internal AI tool, the company has revealed
- But Kim Yo-jong, the influential sister of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said on Tuesday that the allegations proved Washington remained hostile towards Pyongyang, according to North Korea’s
- The FBI is trying to brand the DPRK [the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] as a ‘cybercriminal state,’ claiming that it obtained information that a hacking organisation ‘supported’ by the DPRK
Summary
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange was compromised in an operation that began with an inadvertent download of malware in June, led to a recruitment scam in September and then a raid last week of “hot wallets” where billions of dollars worth of crypto-assets were taken. The FBI has blamed North Korea for last week’s heist but Pyongyang, a prolific crypto-hacker, described the accusation as “absurd rhetoric” on Tuesday. According to an update Binance released on Tuesday, the hackers got their first foothold in the summer when a company engineer inadvertently downloaded malware that exposed the employee’s role and that of others in the team that looked after Binance’s cryptowallet infrastructure.