Elite North Korean hackers are blamed for the $6.3bn Binance raid that experts call the 'largest heist in history'

North Korea's elite TraderTraitor hacking unit drained $6.36bn from Binance wallets across five blockchain networks — XRP Ledger, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tron and Solana — in a 20-minute operation, a conclusion reached with "high confidence" by two blockchain intelligence firms. Elliptic chief scientist Tom Robinson called it "almost certainly the largest theft of any kind in history," a sum that dwarfs even Saddam Hussein's $1bn raid on Iraq's central bank in 2003. Binance co-CEO Richard Teng confirmed the breach began with a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, and said the company has set aside more than $6.34bn to make every affected customer whole. When asked in the Oval Office whether North Korea was responsible, President Trump said "we don't know" and confirmed his administration is actively investigating.

Crypto firms have frozen $3bn of the stolen assets, but $2.4bn remains beyond any issuer's control, already converted into non-freezable Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The hackers used fake employer and project-team personas to deceive Binance engineers — security firm SlowMist says TraderTraitor "attacks people, not code," and attempted to penetrate the exchange on more than 50 separate occasions.

Crypto theft now funds an estimated half of North Korea's entire foreign currency income, bankrolling Kim Jong-un's nuclear weapons programme and his 50-warhead stockpile.