[Anchor]
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has officially confirmed that North Korea is behind the hacking of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, which resulted in the theft of a staggering amount of cryptocurrency exceeding 8 trillion won. Binance stated that it has covered 90 percent of the affected assets using company funds.
Reporter Kim Minpyo has the details.
[Reporter]
The FBI, which is conducting a joint investigation with agencies including the U.S. Secret Service, announced through a press release that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, namely North Korea, is behind the theft of 8.4 trillion won worth of cryptocurrency from Binance.
This marks the FBI's official confirmation that North Korea is behind the hacking.
The FBI identified the perpetrators as TraderTraitor, a known elite North Korean hacking group, and stated, "We have detected signs that they are converting the stolen assets primarily into Ethereum."
The bureau also projected that the hackers would launder the funds by converting the stolen cryptocurrency into other cryptocurrencies.
The FBI released a list of cryptocurrency wallet addresses, including Ethereum, believed to have been used or currently used by the group, and urged the blocking of transactions associated with these addresses.
Security firm TRM Labs analyzed that the hackers conducted rehearsals, preparing for the attack at least 36 hours in advance.
It was reported that the hackers were so meticulous that they stole a astronomical sum of money in under 20 minutes.
However, The Wall Street Journal reported that Binance was completely unaware of these movements, and employees could do nothing but watch in fear as assets drained from accounts in real time.
[Yi He / Binance Co-CEO : There are many things we did wrong. We should have invested more and earlier in security and established stricter standards.]
Binance stated that it has covered 90 percent of the losses using internal funds and plans to cover the remaining 10 percent soon.
(Video Editing: Jeong Yong-hwa)
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