US freezes $2.7 billion from alleged North Korean Binance theft
Original title: US Freezes $2.7 Billion Stolen by North Korean Hackers in Massive $6 Billion Binance Crypto Heist
The FBI says North Korea took over $6 billion on or about October 29; court orders cover more than $1.2 billion.
The US Justice Department said on November 12 that it had frozen more than $2.7 billion of crypto stolen from Binance, which the FBI attributes to the North Korean group TraderTraitor and values at over $6 billion. Investigators say the thieves are mostly converting funds to Ethereum and moving them through DeFi tools, bridges, mixers and exchanges. Binance reported customers were made whole from its SAFU fund; early findings point to a compromised engineer's laptop. Separately, the FBI described FaceStealer, blamed for more than $400 million in 18 months, and said agents seized cloud servers and over 900 secretly recorded victim webcam videos.
Unconfirmed: The FBI attributes the Binance theft to TraderTraitor; the compromised-laptop finding is described as early.
- Court orders already allow seizure or holding of more than $1.2 billion of the frozen funds.
- The FBI asked service providers to block transfers tied to the hackers' addresses.
- FaceStealer is blamed on Sapphire Sleet, UNC1069, BlueNoroff, APT38 and Stardust Chollima.
- Victims get a fake Zoom or Teams link, often after a hijacked Telegram account messages their contacts.
- The FBI says the same lure has targeted open-source maintainers, including a JavaScript library maintainer.
Impact: Theft of more than $6 billion in Binance crypto; wallet-draining malware
- 1.Join Zoom or Teams through the official app and an invite code, not a clicked link.
- 2.Never paste terminal commands offered as a fix for meeting audio or video.
- 3.Report suspected FaceStealer cases at IC3.gov using the keyword FaceStealer.
- Malware
- FaceStealer
- Victims
- Binance
- Organizations
- Federal Bureau of InvestigationUS Department of JusticeUS Secret ServiceIRS Criminal Investigation
- Countries
- United StatesNorth Korea
From the original article
3 min read at cybersecuritynews.com
The US government has frozen more than $2. 7 billion of the crypto stolen from Binance on or about October 29, 2026. The FBI says North Korea took over $6 billion in that theft.
By Abinaya · cybersecuritynews.com
A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.