North Korea has strongly denied accusations by the United States that its hackers were responsible for the $6.3 billion cyberattack on Binance, accusing Washington of using the allegation to undermine its international reputation.
Kim Yo-jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, on Tuesday described the US claim as “absurd rhetoric” and a “grave political provocation”.
Kim, who heads the country's General Affairs Department, said Washington was deliberately associating Pyongyang with cybercriminal activities across the world in an attempt to mislead international public opinion.
“The US has made a trite provocation of linking it with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea again,” she said.
She argued that the American government was unfairly portraying North Korea as responsible for virtually every major cybercrime reported internationally.
“It is a grave political provocation against the DPRK that the US misleads the international public opinion as if all the cyber crimes in different parts of the world are our deeds,” she added.
Kim also insisted that North Korea's official position was against criminal activities in cyberspace.
“It is the consistent policy stand of the DPRK government to resolutely oppose all sorts of malicious acts in cyberspace,” she said.
Her remarks came after the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) formally attributed the massive Binance breach to North Korean state-backed hackers.
In a cybersecurity advisory issued on October 31, the FBI said cyber actors operating under the name TraderTraitor were responsible for the theft, which reportedly occurred on or around October 29.
The agency identified the hackers as North Korean state-sponsored operatives, linking them to a network also known as the Lazarus Group.
The group has been implicated in several high-profile cryptocurrency thefts, including the $1.5 billion attack on Bybit in 2025.
The Binance incident has been described as the biggest cryptocurrency theft in history, further highlighting the security challenges confronting the rapidly expanding digital assets industry.
Following the breach, Binance announced on November 1 that it had restored 95 per cent of the affected funds.
The cryptocurrency exchange also said it would take responsibility for the financial losses arising from the incident, assuring customers that they would not be made to pay for the breach.
North Korea's latest denial adds to the longstanding diplomatic tensions between Pyongyang and Washington, which have repeatedly exchanged accusations over alleged state-sponsored cyber operations.
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