Pyongyang, 3 November. North Korea has rejected US accusations of stealing 6.3 billion dollars from the Binance crypto exchange: Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korea’s leader, called them “an obvious and serious political provocation against us,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
According to her, the United States is misleading world opinion by presenting all cases of cyber fraud in the world as North Korea’s doing. Kim Yo Jong also recalled that the US authorities had announced the confiscation of stolen crypto assets into the state’s strategic reserve — a hint at Washington’s own responsibility. Because of the hostile US stance, she added, Pyongyang will probably “have to revise a number of issues in various aspects”; which ones, is not specified.
As Japan Times relays it, Kim Yo Jong called the accusations absurd rhetoric containing nothing new, and the paper reads the statement as cooling talk of a possible meeting between the leaders of the United States and North Korea. Sources describe her post differently: Kommersant writes of a deputy head of a department of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, while the South Korean Financial News calls her director of the party’s General Affairs Department.
The dispute over Binance has run since 30 October, when the exchange reported the hack. According to preliminary data, it happened because of a data leak from the laptop of one of the company’s DevOps engineers. The FBI blamed the North Korean hacker group TraderTraitor; US President Donald Trump called the bureau’s conclusions into question. A blockchain analytics company cited by the Associated Press also linked the hack to a North Korean unit but called this likely.
What it means: Pyongyang’s response to the FBI’s accusation came out political rather than technical: Kim Yo Jong called the accusation itself a provocation and allowed a revision of a number of issues in relations with the US; what the FBI’s accusations rest on is not discussed in her words, as Kommersant relays them.
What we know now: The official statements of the parties are opposite: the FBI names North Korea as the culprit, Pyongyang denies involvement. Independent confirmation of authorship is absent from the reports reviewed. What part of the stolen funds has been recovered is not given in the sources.
Background: If the estimate of 6.3 billion dollars is correct, this is the largest theft in the history of the crypto industry, The Moscow Times writes.
We have also reported that the FBI attributed to North Korea the theft of more than 6 billion dollars from Binance, and that Binance is resuming withdrawals while Trump doubted the FBI’s version.
