Hackers have targeted Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, in an attack that could result in losses of up to $6.3 billion.
Analysts believe the incident could become the largest cryptocurrency theft in history.
Binance representatives stressed that the company is making efforts to freeze the stolen funds. So far, it has managed to trace approximately $3 billion.
Binance co-founder Yi He said the security breach may have been linked to the hacking of a software development and support engineer’s laptop.
The breach allowed the attacker to gain access to a service container and initiate unauthorised withdrawal transactions.
She added that Binance would compensate customers for all losses. However, as a precautionary measure, all deposits and withdrawals will be suspended while security checks are carried out.
Meanwhile, US-based blockchain intelligence company TRM said the North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor was most likely responsible for the theft.
“We make this assessment with high confidence,” TRM stated.
“The attacker transferred approximately $6.36 billion from Binance wallets across ten blockchains, most of it within around 20 minutes,” TRM explained.
In February last year, cryptocurrency exchange Bybit suffered losses of $1.5 billion in a cyberattack.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) attributed the attack to North Korea and the TraderTraitor hacking group.
“Several characteristics of this attack match previous thefts linked to North Korea, including the Bybit hack,” TRM noted.
Blockchain analytics company Chainalysis also believes that TraderTraitor hackers were most likely behind the attack on Binance.
Experts explain that North Korea has increasingly targeted cryptocurrency exchanges and engaged in other illicit cyber activities to obtain much-needed funds to support its struggling economy and finance the country’s nuclear programme.
In December 2022, South Korea’s intelligence agency announced that North Korean hackers had stolen approximately 1.5 trillion won (around one billion euros) in cryptocurrencies and other virtual assets over the previous five years.
More than half of that amount was stolen in 2022 alone.
The agency stated that North Korea’s capabilities in stealing digital assets were considered among the most advanced in the world.