Episode summary
How North Korean Hackers Pulled Off a $6.3 Billion Crypto Heist
The Journal
· · Hosts: Bob McMillan, Sam Kessler
Summary
Binance’s international exchange was hit by what the reporters say became the largest crypto heist in history, with North Korean hackers siphoning off $6.3 billion in about 20 minutes. Binance says it froze roughly half the stolen funds, but the remaining billions still need to be laundered and converted into spendable assets.
The attack appears to have started with social engineering rather than brute-force code breaking. According to Binance, the hackers compromised two employees: one through a malicious software download tied to a search result for Homebrew, and another through a fake job interview that pushed malware onto a corporate laptop. From there, the attackers appear to have used internal access, including an AI platform and wallet-signing capabilities, to make withdrawals look legitimate.
The reporters argue that the case shows how sophisticated North Korean cyber operations have become, blending trust exploitation, malware, and blockchain mechanics. It also raises a bigger problem for crypto: even where users are made whole, exchanges can still suffer major trust damage, and the industry remains exposed to money laundering and crime concerns.
Key takeaways
- The reporters say Binance lost $6.3 billion in 20 minutes, though about $3 billion was frozen quickly.
- Binance says the hackers gained entry by compromising two employees through a malicious software download and a fake job interview.
- The heist appears to have used internal access and Ethereum changes in 2025 to make withdrawals look authentic.
- Bitcoin fell 4% to 5% in the first 24 hours after the attack, according to the guest.
- The guest says Binance has a trust problem now, even if customers were made whole.
Notable quotes
“we were able to be the first, um, to report with the help of, um, you know, some of our sources that this was a North Korean heist”
“they watched in real time as this money flowed out of their accounts $1 billion.02 billion dollars all the way up to what became $6.3 billion”
“they actually take advantage of a person who is inside the system, who is inside Binance”
“There was also an update to Ethereum in 2025 that was exploited”
“Bitcoin's value did go down within the 1st 24 hours of the attack. It went down 4 or 5%”
How the episode opens
How do you steal 6.3 billion? Hard to figure out. Um, we're still trying to figure it out.
Welcome to Tech News Briefing. I'm Bob McMillan, and I'm here with my colleague Sam Kessler. Sam, do you want to introduce yourself because, uh, uh, I don't think I could do it justice.
Oh, thanks, thanks for having me, Bob. Um, so I'm, uh, like you, I'm a reporter here at the Journal. I do data journalism and investigations, and over the past year plus, um, along with Bob, I've been looking a lot into crypto and cyber heists, uh, specifically North Korean cyber heists.
So this is a big week for For both of us. October twenty-ninth. You, you, you actually texted me about this around, it was around 5 p.m.
your time I think. Uh, there's something going on. Yeah, so I just finished writing a story about a hack at Polymarket, and I was scrolling Twitter, and I saw a tweet about a potential hack at Binance.
At that point, it was potential. Uh, so Binance is the biggest cryptocurrency exchange. It has a US based company.
This was not the US based outfit. This was the international exchange, by far the largest part of Binance's business. And I saw this tweet.
It looked like they might have been losing money from one of their accounts in a way that was hard to explain. And immediately, I think, I think it was pretty immediate. I gave you a call, Bob, and I was like, Hey, um, if the numbers I'm looking at are right, I think this might be the biggest cyber heist of all time, and, uh, pretty quickly we realized that was the case.
And over the next few days, Sam, you kind of pieced together this hack.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- north korea crypto heist
- binance hack
- cybersecurity
- crypto exchanges
- data journalism investigations
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Binance
- Polymarket
Watch the episode
Watch “How North Korean Hackers Pulled Off a $6.3 Billion Crypto Heist” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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