TRM Labs said a blockchain intelligence firm said an elite North Korean hacking unit called TraderTraitor was behind the heist.
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Cryptocurrency worth more than $6.3bn has been stolen from an online exchange in what’s thought to be the largest hack in human history.
The hackers targeted Binance, one of the world’s largest digital platforms used for trading, with the exchange now working to establish how hackers managed to infiltrate the marketplace.
An elite group of North Korean hackers, who go by the name of the TraderTraitor group, are thought to be behind the hack.
TRM Labs, a blockchain intelligence firm that surveils the industry, said the elite hacking unit were able to carry out the record-breaking heist in just 20 minutes.
Early suggestions indicate the hackers may have gained access through an engineer’s laptop that had been compromised.
The access is then thought to have allowed hackers to make unauthorised withdrawals, Binance said.
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If initial estimates of $6.3bn are correct, it would make the overnight hack the largest known heist in cryptocurrency history.
The Binance crypto exchange added that it will “cover all losses” in the wake of the hack.
The previous record stands at $1.5bn, when hackers infiltrated the Bybit exchange last year.
The funds were seen to move across 10 blockchains at 20:05 GMT on October 29, with the majority of the transfers taking place within just 20 minutes.
The TraderTraitor group, which is thought to be behind the hack, has previously been linked to the Bybit hack by the FBI.
It comes as one insider familiar with the hack branded it the “largest cryptocurrency heist in human history”.
The hack specifically concerns Binance.com, with it’s considerably smaller US crypto platform Binance.US, unaffected by the hack.
In the wake of the hack, several cryptocurrency issuers, including Tether, Circle and BitGo have frozen assets.
Stablecoin issuer Tether said it had frozen nearly $1.57bn in assets tied to the hack, while Circle froze more than $800m.
World Liberty Financial, a crypto company linked to the Trump family, confirmed it was working with cryptocurrency custodian BitGo to freeze funds.
Taking to social media, Yi He, Binance’s co-chief executive, thanked various cryptocurrency issuers for freezing the assets.
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It comes as Ari Redbord, chief policy officer of the crypto analytics company TRM Labs, told Sky News: “This is an extraordinary hack, for its size and for the response … Few financial systems have ever shown a theft of this scale.”
“Safety first: withdrawals are currently disabled until the environment is confirmed to be secure,” she added.
However, Mr Redbord said the attacker still controls around $2.4bn (£1.8bn) worth of Bitcoin and Ether despite the freeze.
After Binance’s security team identified the hack, digital assets worth more than $3bn (£2.2bn) were frozen to prevent funds being transferred or cashed out by the thieves.
But Mr Redbord said the attacker still controls about $2.4bn (£1.8bn) worth of Bitcoin and Ether – the two biggest cryptocurrencies by valuation.
