The FBI has confirmed that North Korea was responsible for stealing more than $6 billion in virtual assets from Binance on or around October 29. Its October 31 alert identifies the malicious cyber activity as TraderTraitor, moving the attribution beyond earlier private-sector assessments.
The bureau said investigators working with the U.S. Secret Service and IRS Criminal Investigation had observed the attackers converting stolen assets primarily into ether. It expects the funds to undergo further laundering through decentralized finance protocols and instant-swap services as the operation continues.
The three agencies urged private-sector firms to block transactions involving or derived from addresses linked to the stolen funds. The notice specifically addresses THORNode and RPC node operators, instant exchanges, DeFi services, blockchain analytics companies and other virtual-asset service providers, and publishes associated wallet addresses.
TRM Labs had previously attributed the roughly $6.36 billion incident to TraderTraitor with high confidence. That figure and Binance’s rounded $6.3 billion impact estimate describe the same theft. The FBI’s notice confirms responsibility but does not announce a new, separate loss.
Attribution also remains separate from asset recovery. In its latest funding update, Binance said it had replenished 90% of affected assets using reserves and purchases. That is the exchange’s replacement-funding claim, rather than confirmation that investigators recovered 90% of the stolen cryptocurrency.
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