U.S. DOJ freezes over $1.2B tied to Binance hack

The U.S. Department of Justice said it disrupted hacking infrastructure linked to North Korea’s large-scale cryptocurrency theft and, with court approval, froze more than $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency stolen from Binance to prevent its seizure targets from disposing of the assets. According to the DOJ, North Korean hackers stole more than $400 million in cryptocurrency over the past 18 months through social-engineering attacks known as FaceStealer. U.S. authorities seized the cloud infrastructure used in the attacks, while the FBI secured more than 900 webcam videos of victims. The scheme involved sending video conference invitations and luring victims into joining meetings. In a separate response tied to the Binance hack, the FBI said TraderTraitor, a North Korean military-linked hacking group, stole more than $6 billion in virtual assets from Binance on or around Oct. 29. Through cooperation between the U.S. government and the private sector, more than $2.7 billion has been frozen so far, and the DOJ has received court approval to seize or restrict disposal of more than $1.2 billion of that amount. U.S. authorities said they are tracking efforts to launder the stolen assets through crypto bridges, mixers and exchanges, and will continue asset freezes, seizures and recovery efforts.