$6.3B gone: Meet TraderTraitor, the elite North Korean hackers accused of the 'largest bank ...

Binance has suspended operations after hackers stole $6.3 billion from the crypto exchange in a brazen attack, a total that Ari Redbord, TRM's global head of policy is calling the "largest bank heist in human history."

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, who goes by CZ, assured users in a post on X.com that their funds were safe after the attack and confirmed it did appear to be a hack. North Korea's TraderTraitor group is being blamed for the attack by TRM Labs and other cybersecurity experts. It's a familiar name to people in the crypto community, as it has pulled off major heists in the past.

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The FBI named TraderTraitor as the group responsible for a $1.5 billion hack of Bybit in February of last year. It's also suspected to be involved in the KelpDAO hack that occurred in April.

TraderTraitor's focus

TraderTraitor is one of the most elite hacker groups known today. While some state- groups focus on espionage or discovering sensitive information, this group specializes in crypto crimes. The currency it steals can then be used to fund operations in the country, including North Korea's burgeoning nuclear program .

The group, which emerged in 2022, is part of a larger North Korean hacker collective known as Lazarus Group, which is reportedly run from the Reconnaissance General Bureau, North Korea's intelligence agency. (Lazarus gained notoriety in 2014 when it was accused of hacking Sony Pictures in retaliation for a film that mocked Kim Jong-Un.) TraderTraitor is also known as Jade Sleet, Slow Pisces and UNC4899.

The group, like many hacker collectives, has increasingly been using artificial intelligence to assist with its attacks. A report from Microsoft, released Thursday , found that in June of this year, TraderTraitor (operating as Jade Sleet) had posed as recruiters "for a spoofed AI-powered blockchain intelligence company, using software engineer-themed opportunities to initiate and schedule interviews with individuals who engaged with the outreach." The group operated three such fronts in a four day period.

After running an AI analysis of the information collected from those talks, the group can "accelerate operational workflows, including rapidly developing target- and industry-specific knowledge, tailoring reconnaissance and targeting, and scaling outreach to target individuals," Microsoft wrote.

A long history of cybercrime

Before the Binance attack and even before Bybit, TraderTraitor has been very active.

The FBI, Department of Defense, and police in Japan blame the group for a March 2024 attack on DMM, a Japan-based cryptocurrency company. That hack captured $308 million. And members of the group were reportedly part of APT38, a North Korean hacker collective that attacked the SWIFT financial system, trying to steal $1 billion from the Central Bank of Bangladesh in 2016.

The attacks have been lucrative for North Korea. After Bybit, the FBI warned the stolen funds would be laundered and converted to cash. Within two weeks, the hackers had cashed out $300 million , making the funds unrecoverable.

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This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: $6.3B gone: Meet TraderTraitor, the elite North Korean hackers accused of the 'largest bank heist in human history'

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