A senior North Korean official has formally denied that the country was behind the record-breaking cyberattack targeting cryptocurrency exchange Binance, despite attribution reports from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and independent blockchain investigative firms.
The rebuttal comes after U.S. security agencies published the initial FBI allegation report regarding the sophisticated attack vector in the Binance hack via the EIP-7702 mechanism, which resulted in the exchange losing over $6 billion in assets.
Pyongyang’s Official Stance
According to a report by South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency on November 2, Kim Yo-jong, a senior official in the North Korean government and sister of leader Kim Jong-un, vehemently rejected the U.S. findings.
In the released statement, Kim Yo-jong criticized the FBI for attempting to brand North Korea as a cybercriminal state by claiming to have gathered information on a state-sponsored hacker organization involved in the incident. The FBI has not issued a public comment following the statement.
Earlier, on-chain security analytics firms, including TRM Labs, published evidence showing that the attackers had tested malicious code on three wallets before compromising Binance’s hot wallet, turning it into an automated withdrawal tool via Ethereum’s EIP-7702 authorization standard.
Geopolitical Controversy Surrounding Cryptocurrency Cyberattacks
The attack targeting Binance is recorded as the largest cryptocurrency theft in history, causing severe tremors across the digital financial market and triggering investigative responses from multiple international law enforcement agencies.
Geopolitical experts note that the prompt and direct response from North Korean authorities indicates that cybersecurity allegations in the digital asset sector are escalating into complex diplomatic tensions between Washington and Pyongyang.
Currently, recovering the stolen funds still depends on the international security community’s efforts to monitor and freeze on-chain accounts, as the attackers continue to split and disperse funds across thousands of intermediary wallet addresses.