207

North Korea is likely culprit behind $6.3bn crypto hack, ‘largest heist in history’ (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 day ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

50 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Binance exchange says it will cover customer losses as it scrambles to freeze affected assets, with about $3bn located so far

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has been hit by a record $6.3bn (£4.7bn) hack described as the biggest heist in history, with experts identifying North Korea as the likely culprit.

Binance said it would cover all customer losses as it froze $3bn of the affected assets.

Analysts said the exchange had been subjected to an unprecedented attack with “never-seen-before” laundering patterns as the hackers made off with assets worth billions of dollars.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] tal@lemmy.today 31 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

“This is almost certainly the largest theft of any kind in history,” said Tom Robinson, chief scientist at crypto consultancy Elliptic.

If it's North Korea, and if they get to make use of it, it'd be over 1/6th of their GDP, which is pretty bonkers.

There was that massive bank fraud case in Moldova a few years back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Moldovan_bank_fraud_scandal

In 2014, $1 billion disappeared from three Moldovan banks: Banca de Economii, Unibank and Banca Socială.[3] This bank fraud was a coordinated effort involving all three banks working together to extract as much loan finance as possible from the banks without any obvious business rationale. Ilan Șor, a Moldovan businessman, together with Vladimir Plahotniuc and Serghei Iaralov "masterminded" the scam. Șor was chairman of the board at Banca de Economii (Savings Bank, BEM) up to 28 November 2014.[4]

Funds worth $1 billion were transferred to the United Kingdom and Hong Kong shell companies used to conceal the real owners of assets,[3][5] then deposited into Latvian bank accounts under the names of various foreigners.

The total loss from the scheme was equivalent to 12% of Moldova's GDP.[6]

A carousel borrowing scheme was applied, loans at one bank were paid off with loans from another. The massive expansion of bank lending was funded with heavy borrowing from Russian companies.

That'd be a larger relative impact than the bank fraud was on Moldova (albeit on the receiving side, not the stolen-from side).

[-] northendtrooper@lemmy.ca 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

If it's North Korea, and if they get to make use of it, it'd be over 1/6th of their GDP, which is pretty bonkers.

Kind of amazing when you put it into prospective. What is scarier is that much suddenly cash flow can help them purchase 'stuff' for 'defense'

[-] von@infosec.pub 1 points 19 hours ago

18.5% vs 12% of GDP, to make the comparison directly. 50% larger relatively, and in the opposite direction as you pointed out.

this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2026

207 points (98.1% liked)

World News

58833 readers

1928 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF OCTOBER 19 2025
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world

Ask Historians !askhistorians@lemmy.world

Recommendations

How to spot Misinformation and Propaganda

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

NewsAutoMod@lemmy.world

Tenthrow@lemmy.world

little_cow@lemmy.world

lemmyAtom@lemmy.world

jordanlund@lemmy.world