Reported by The Guardian
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has been hit by a $6.3bn heist that, according to experts, is likely to be the work of North Korea .
This is not the first time a crypto market has been targeted by hackers, and the rogue state has a track record of this type of theft. Here we answer some key questions about what’s happened:
It could be the biggest heist of any kind in history, according to Elliptic, a consultancy specialising in crypto-related crime. The incident, which took place late on Thursday, is more than four times bigger than the previous largest crypto hack, the $1.5bn one targeting the Bybit exchange last year . Elliptic says there does not appear to be anything comparable in the pre-crypto era.
More from the original report
It does not appear that private keys were hacked. Instead, a Binance engineer’s laptop was infiltrated, which in turn allowed the attackers to drain “hot” wallets. Binance later added that there were “additional points of breach” in its systems as well as the laptop.
This attack has been attributed to a North Korean hacking unit called TraderTraitor, a name assigned to it by the US government. The communist state, short of cash and hamstrung by sanctions, has a strong track record of crypto hacking. TraderTraitor emerged from Lazarus, a group working from North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, a military intelligence agency.