North Korea has denied claims that it was behind the report $6.3bn (£4.7bn) hack of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, calling the allegations an “absurd rhetoric”.
Kim Yo-jong, a prime Democratic People’s Republic of Korea official and the sister of chief Kim Jong Un, said on Tuesday that the accusations are another “sinister attempt” by the US to harm the nation’s public image.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Secret Service and cyber analysts have said North Korea orchestrated the hack – which has been described as the largest in historical past.
Pyongyang has also been blamed for a quantity of main cyber attacks – accusations that it has constantly denied.
Blockchain analysts and the FBI have said the attack was led by state-backed hacking group TraderTraitor.
The FBI has called on industry companions to help block transactions involving cryptocurrency accounts linked to the group.
“The US has made a trite provocation of linking it with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea again,” Kim Yo-jong, the director of North Korea’s General Affairs Department, said in a assertion.
“It is a grave political provocation against the DPRK that the US misleads the international public opinion as if all the cyber crimes in different parts of the world are our deeds,” she said.
The incident is the newest hack to be linked to North Korea, which has been accused of relying on cyber-crime to help finance its financial system.
The TraderTraitor unit, which is also identified as the Lazarus Group, was blamed for a then-record $1.5bn hack of crypto exchange Bybit in 2025.
Pyongyang has systematically constructed its cyber operations, recruiting promising college students from universities and sending them to hacker models overseen by North Korea’s intelligence company, analysis teams like the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies think tank have said.
The nation has constantly denied such claims.
Kim Yo-jong said “it is the consistent policy stand of the DPRK government to resolutely oppose all sorts of malicious acts in cyberspace”.
The BBC has contacted Binance for remark. Since the hack, the crypto giant has largely targeted its public statements on the technical nature of the breach and its response to defend customers.
The company said initial checks indicated that an engineer’s laptop computer had been compromised, enabling an attacker to make unauthorised withdrawals.
Trading in main cryptocurrencies on Binance has since resumed after the exchange labored with issuers to freeze property impacted by the hack.
Binance said on Sunday that its clients pulled out more than $3.6bn of property from its exchange as it reopened after suspending all transactions in the wake of the hack.
The company has repeatedly said it would cowl all of the losses linked to the attack and that it has so far coated around 95% of the property stolen in the breach.
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