North Korea denies involvement in Binance hack and criticizes FBI probe as 'a trite provocation'

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.”