{"id":665251,"date":"2026-11-03T04:34:19","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T04:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/665251\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T04:34:19","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T04:34:19","slug":"north-korea-denies-involvement-in-binance-hack-criticizes-fbi-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/665251\/","title":{"rendered":"North Korea denies involvement in Binance hack, criticizes FBI probe"},"content":{"rendered":"

SEOUL, South Korea — SEOUL, South Korea (AP) \u2014 North Korea<\/a> on Tuesday denied its involvement in the recent cryptocurrency heist at Binance, dismissing as \u201ca trite provocation\u201d a U.S. announcement that North Korean hackers were behind the incident. <\/p>\n

Binance, the world\u2019s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, said Friday that hackers stole more than $6 billion<\/a> in what appears to be the largest cryptocurrency heist on record. The FBI<\/a> 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<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, called the FBI announcement \u201ca trite provocation\u201d and \u201can absurd rhetoric.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThis 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 \u2018cyber crime\u2019 incidents whenever they occur on an international scale,\u201d she said in a statement, using the abbreviation of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn this occasion, we confirmed Washington\u2019s hostile attitude toward the DPRK once again and are closely monitoring a variety of persistent provocations of the U.S. against our state,\u201d Kim Yo Jong said.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s spy agency estimated<\/a> that North Korean hackers had stolen 1.5 trillion won ($1.1 billion) in cryptocurrency and other virtual assets over the previous five years.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

South Korea\u2019s Foreign Ministry said Monday that North Korea\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The Binance heist came as North Korea has ramped up its weapons tests<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Asked by reporters later during a Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump suggested investigators weren\u2019t yet certain that North Korea was involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not concerned. We\u2019re learning about it,\u201d Trump said of the case. \u201cWe don\u2019t know if it\u2019s North Korea,\u201d he added, though saying investigators could still determine that it was.<\/p>\n

In her Tuesday statement, Kim Yo Jong said: \u201cWe have issues to reconsider in diverse aspects as regards the very unpleasant U.S. hostile attitude.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL, South Korea — SEOUL, South Korea (AP) \u2014 North Korea on Tuesday denied its involvement in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,737,4631,21414,122,11414,85,46,13591,126],"class_list":["post-665251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-crime","tag-cryptocurrency","tag-cybercrime","tag-general-news","tag-hacking","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-theft","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}