The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has identified North Korea as the mastermind behind the hacking of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, which resulted in the theft of $6.3 billion worth of cryptocurrency.

In a press release on October 31 (local time), the FBI stated, "We are announcing that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) is responsible for the incident in which over $6 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen from Binance."

While North Korea had been suspected as the culprit behind the hack since the incident occurred, this marks the first time the FBI has officially confirmed it.

The FBI announced that the perpetrators are known to be TraderTraitor, an elite North Korean hacking group, adding, "We have detected signs that TraderTraitor operatives are converting the stolen assets primarily into Ethereum (ETH)."

The FBI expects that additional money laundering will take place as the stolen cryptocurrency is converted into other cryptocurrencies through decentralized finance (DeFi) and instant exchange services.

The FBI released a list of Ethereum, Bitcoin (BTC), and Solana (SOL) wallet addresses believed to have been used or currently being used by them, urging, "We urge the blocking of transactions related to or originating from the addresses that TraderTraitor operatives are using to launder the stolen assets."

The FBI also stated, "We remain committed to protecting the cryptocurrency community by identifying, mitigating, and disrupting North Korea's illicit cybercrimes and virtual asset theft activities," while calling for tips and reports.

Previously, Binance announced that it suffered losses when $6.3 billion worth of virtual assets were unauthorizedly withdrawn in an attack targeting a hacked engineer's laptop and loopholes in the transaction approval system.

This is the largest single-hack scale in the history of the virtual asset industry.

Following the incident on October 29, the FBI has been conducting a joint investigation with the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) to resolve the case.