NKorea Denies Binance Hack Involvement 11/03 06:34

   

   SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea on Tuesday denied its involvement in 
the recent cryptocurrency heist at Binance, dismissing as "a trite provocation" 
a U.S. announcement that North Korean hackers were behind the incident.

   Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, said Friday that 
hackers stole more than $6 billion in what appears to be the largest 
cryptocurrency heist on record. The FBI later said the theft was orchestrated 
by North Korean hackers, attributing the attack to a hacking group known as 
TraderTraitor, which was also behind a $1.5 billion hack of the Bybit exchange 
last year.

   On Tuesday, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim 
Jong Un, called the FBI announcement "a trite provocation" and "an absurd 
rhetoric."

   "This is not the first time that the U.S. has attempted to spread 
misunderstanding of the DPRK in the international community, blindly linking 
the DPRK with the 'cyber crime' incidents whenever they occur on an 
international scale," she said in a statement, using the abbreviation of North 
Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

   "On this occasion, we confirmed Washington's hostile attitude toward the 
DPRK once again and are closely monitoring a variety of persistent provocations 
of the U.S. against our state," Kim Yo Jong said.

   Outside experts say North Korea has increasingly turned to cryptocurrency 
theft and other illicit cyber activities as a source of badly needed foreign 
currency, helping sustain its struggling economy and fund its nuclear program 
in the face of stringent U.S.-led international sanctions and other challenges. 
In December 2022, South Korea's spy agency estimated that North Korean hackers 
had stolen 1.5 trillion won ($1.1 billion) in cryptocurrency and other virtual 
assets over the previous five years.

   Although the country has mostly denied involvement, North Korea has been 
linked to numerous major cyberattacks in past years, including a 2013 campaign 
that paralyzed the servers of South Korean financial institutions, the 2014 
hacking of Sony Pictures, and the WannaCry malware attack of 2017.

   South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Monday that North Korea's illicit cyber 
activities pose an increasing threat to the global digital economy and that 
Seoul was closely cooperating with the United States and the broader 
international community to address the threat.

   The Binance heist came as North Korea has ramped up its weapons tests in a 
likely bid to increase its leverage in potential diplomacy with the U.S. after 
U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his desire to restore diplomacy with Kim 
Jong Un. On Tuesday, North Korea said it tested a new cluster warhead for 
strategic cruise missiles.

   Asked by reporters later during a Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago estate 
in Florida, Trump suggested investigators weren't yet certain that North Korea 
was involved.

   "I'm not concerned. We're learning about it," Trump said of the case. "We 
don't know if it's North Korea," he added, though saying investigators could 
still determine that it was.

   In her Tuesday statement, Kim Yo Jong said: "We have issues to reconsider in 
diverse aspects as regards the very unpleasant U.S. hostile attitude."