Trump casts doubt on the FBI finding that North Korean hackers stole a record $6.3bn from crypto exchange Binance
The FBI warned that those responsible for the Binance raid are converting stolen funds into Ethereum and laundering them through decentralised finance platforms.Kim Jong Un, whose country's TraderTraitor unit carried out the Binance raid using access gained through a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, according to investigators.
At a Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night, Trump told reporters 'We don't know if it's North Korea' — directly contradicting his own FBI, which had just formally blamed the Pyongyang-linked hacking unit TraderTraitor for the $6.3bn theft from Binance. Trump added that if North Korea was responsible, his administration would 'talk to North Korea about it', and called the crypto industry 'a little bit dangerous'. The FBI's announcement came after a joint investigation with the US Secret Service and the IRS Criminal Investigation division.
TraderTraitor is linked to the wider Lazarus Group, the same outfit accused of hacking Sony Pictures in 2014 over the Kim Jong Un-mocking film 'The Interview'.
The FBI says hackers are converting stolen assets into Ethereum before moving them through decentralised finance platforms to launder the funds.
Binance investors have since pulled a net $3.6bn from the platform, though the exchange says withdrawal volumes are now stabilising.
