US<\/strong><\/a> authorities have said a North Korean hacking unit called TraderTraitor was responsible for the theft, which was reportedly competed in less than 20 minutes.<\/p>\n It is believed to be the largest cryptocurrency<\/strong><\/a> hack to date – surpassing the $1.5bn (\u00a31.13bn) that was stolen when the Bybit exchange was targeted last year.<\/p>\n The US government and private sector have collectively managed to freeze more than $2.7bn (\u00a32bn) of the funds stolen from Binance, with the Department of Justice saying on Thursday that it had obtained court authorisation to seize or restrain in excess of $1.2bn of that total.<\/p>\n In such situations, the US government will typically file a claim of forfeiture with a judge, who will then determine who has a legitimate claim to the recovered funds.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Binance said it had “completed coverage of assets impacted in the security incident” and thanked users for their “patience and understanding”.<\/p>\n The company said it had published a “Proof of Reserves snapshot” and that “once the zero-knowledge proof is generated, users can independently verify that their assets are backed at a minimum of 1:1”.<\/p>\n Binance, one of the world’s biggest platforms for trading digital assets, previously said that “90% of stolen assets have been replenished”<\/strong><\/a>, adding that the company will “absorb the financial impact” of the stolen funds, and not pass these on to their users.<\/p>\n Speaking after the hack, Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said the company’s initial investigation suggested the incident “may have started with a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop”.<\/p>\n In a post on X, Mr Teng added: “To be clear: the attacker did not simply use one engineer’s permissions, and this was not a single ‘one-click’ action. It involved a more complex attack process.”<\/p>\n Binance has said that its users – of which the company claims there are 335 million worldwide – are covered by the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), set up by the company in 2018 to protect users assets in “extreme cases”, including security breaches or platform-level incidents.<\/p>\n North Korea accused of ‘highly effective’ scheme<\/strong><\/p>\n The FBI has also blamed North Korea for a separate scheme it says resulted in the theft of more than $400m (\u00a3302m) worth of cryptocurrency over the last 18 months.<\/p>\n Known as FaceStealer, the “highly effective” scheme involved combining the hijacking of popular messaging apps and the recording of deepfake videos, the FBI said.<\/p>\n The US has repeatedly accused North Korea of using cyber schemes to generate funds for its regime, including its weapons program.<\/p>\n Officials insisted the US “will continue the fight” against those who they said “financially gain from cybercrime”.<\/p>\n Source: \u00a0![\"Sky](\"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/sky-news-logo-1.png\"){kind=logo}
<\/a> news.sky.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"