EnHeng嗯哼.Ai|Nov 01, 2026 09:35
The most profitable foreign trade business right now is dealing with North Korean hackers. The Kim family, known for exploiting bugs throughout their lives, are a prime example. Kim Il-sung defaulted on a $70 million Volvo debt, Kim Jong-il created counterfeit dollars, and Kim Jong-un is now involved in North Korean hacking.
The FBI has officially named North Korea as responsible for the $6 billion theft from Binance on October 29th. The group's codename is TraderTraitor. The most outrageous figures are: the approximately $6.3 billion theft from Binance is the largest theft in human history; most of the money was transferred within about 20 minutes. Fortunately, a significant amount of stablecoins was frozen in time, with approximately $2.8 billion already frozen. Binance also stated that it will fully compensate users with its own funds, and users will not bear any losses.
How did they succeed? They didn't break into a safe; instead, they tricked the person opening it. Binance's preliminary investigation suggests that the initial attack likely occurred when an operations engineer's laptop was hacked. The hackers used this computer to access the internal system and had Binance's own signature system sign a series of transaction records on their behalf. The hot wallet, mistaking it for a normal withdrawal, sent the money.
On Ethereum, the hackers used a new feature that essentially made the wallet sign a power of attorney, handing the wallet over to their program for safekeeping. Newly deposited funds were then also withdrawn. The hackers had been preparing for a day and a half, practicing with small amounts of money before the operation, and even using a program to automatically delete traces before launching their attack. Binance later added that there were other entry points besides that one computer.
Why is North Korea so powerful? A Microsoft report on October 29th stated that Microsoft was monitoring eight North Korean-backed hacking groups. Some impersonated officials and journalists to gain favor and send phishing documents; others invited users to online meetings, deliberately saying things like, "Your voice has a problem, install a repair tool," when in fact they were installing malware; still others used AI to create fake resumes, allowing users to work remotely at foreign companies and have their salaries sent back home. North Korea selects math-savvy children from elementary school, trains them to be hackers, and then sends them overseas as programmers.
How are stolen coins turned into real currency? Through overseas intermediaries. A report from a multinational sanctions monitoring team revealed that of the $1.5 billion stolen from Bybit last year, intermediaries helped convert over $100 million into cash, which was then used by overseas companies to pay for goods and services for North Korea. The FBI also observed that hackers are converting the stolen funds into Ethereum and then laundering them through various exchange services.
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