Pyongyang Rejects Link to Record Binance Breach
North Korea has firmly pushed back against assertions that the regime was responsible for the $6.3 billion (£4.7 billion) theft from cryptocurrency platform Binance, a sum that makes it the largest hack of a digital-asset exchange ever recorded. In a public statement released on Tuesday, Kim Yo-jong — the younger sister of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and one of the most senior figures in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's government — labeled the accusations "absurd rhetoric" and a deliberate effort to tarnish the country's standing on the world stage.
Kim, who serves as director of the DPRK's General Affairs Department, framed the allegations as part of a broader pattern of hostility from Washington. "The US has made a trite provocation of linking it with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea again," she said. She went on to argue that American authorities are "mislead[ing] the international public opinion as if all the cyber crimes in different parts of the world are our deeds," calling the move a "grave political provocation" against her country.
US Agencies Point Fingers at North Korean Hacking Group
The United States has taken the opposite position. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, and independent cyber-analytic firms all concluded that North Korean state actors orchestrated the intrusion. They identified the operation as the work of a state-backed unit known as TraderTraitor, a label long associated with the notorious Lazarus Group.
That same collective has previously been held responsible for the $1.5 billion theft from crypto exchange Bybit in 2025, which at the time stood as the largest single breach in the sector's history. The FBI has urged industry partners to cooperate in freezing and blocking transactions flowing through cryptocurrency wallets tied to the group, in an effort to limit the group's ability to launder the stolen funds.
Pyongyang has been singled out as the suspected mastermind behind a string of high-profile cyber incidents over recent years, allegations it has uniformly denied. The repeated accusations have become a recurring flashpoint in US–DPRK relations, with Washington consistently naming North Korean units in its public reporting while Pyongyang characterizes such claims as politically motivated fabrications.
Binance Focuses on Technical Response
The BBC reached out to Binance for a response to the latest round of accusations. Since the breach unfolded, the crypto exchange has kept its public communications narrowly focused on the technical dimensions of the incident and the steps it is taking to safeguard its user base, rather than engaging directly with the geopolitical debate over attribution.