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NKorea Denies Binance Hack Involvement 11/03 06:34
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea on Tuesday denied its involvement in
the recent cryptocurrency heist at Binance, dismissing as "a trite provocation"
a U.S. announcement that North Korean hackers were behind the incident.
Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, said Friday that
hackers stole more than $6 billion in what appears to be the largest
cryptocurrency heist on record. The FBI later said the theft was orchestrated
by North Korean hackers, attributing the attack to a hacking group known as
TraderTraitor, which was also behind a $1.5 billion hack of the Bybit exchange
last year.
On Tuesday, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un, called the FBI announcement "a trite provocation" and "an absurd
rhetoric."
"This is not the first time that the U.S. has attempted to spread
misunderstanding of the DPRK in the international community, blindly linking
the DPRK with the 'cyber crime' incidents whenever they occur on an
international scale," she said in a statement, using the abbreviation of North
Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"On this occasion, we confirmed Washington's hostile attitude toward the
DPRK once again and are closely monitoring a variety of persistent provocations
of the U.S. against our state," Kim Yo Jong said.
Outside experts say North Korea has increasingly turned to cryptocurrency
theft and other illicit cyber activities as a source of badly needed foreign
currency, helping sustain its struggling economy and fund its nuclear program
in the face of stringent U.S.-led international sanctions and other challenges.
In December 2022, South Korea's spy agency estimated that North Korean hackers
had stolen 1.5 trillion won ($1.1 billion) in cryptocurrency and other virtual
assets over the previous five years.
Although the country has mostly denied involvement, North Korea has been
linked to numerous major cyberattacks in past years, including a 2013 campaign
that paralyzed the servers of South Korean financial institutions, the 2014
hacking of Sony Pictures, and the WannaCry malware attack of 2017.
South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Monday that North Korea's illicit cyber
activities pose an increasing threat to the global digital economy and that
Seoul was closely cooperating with the United States and the broader
international community to address the threat.
The Binance heist came as North Korea has ramped up its weapons tests in a
likely bid to increase its leverage in potential diplomacy with the U.S. after
U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his desire to restore diplomacy with Kim
Jong Un. On Tuesday, North Korea said it tested a new cluster warhead for
strategic cruise missiles.
Asked by reporters later during a Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago estate
in Florida, Trump suggested investigators weren't yet certain that North Korea
was involved.
"I'm not concerned. We're learning about it," Trump said of the case. "We
don't know if it's North Korea," he added, though saying investigators could
still determine that it was.
In her Tuesday statement, Kim Yo Jong said: "We have issues to reconsider in
diverse aspects as regards the very unpleasant U.S. hostile attitude."
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