Binance Hackers Created a Token to Trade With Themselves

On November 3, TRM Labs reported that attackers behind the October 29 theft of about $6.36 billion from Binance wallets across ten blockchains used a self-created TRON token to trade value between addresses without direct transfers. The token could be minted only by its creator and traded in one pool paired with a lending protocol’s receipt token, a claim on a deposit; the seller redeemed receipt tokens for USDT and converted it to TRX. The FBI attributed the theft to North Korea on October 31 and named the activity TraderTraitor. Tether, Circle, Ripple, World Liberty Financial and Arbitrum’s security council froze nearly $2.7 billion within hours; about $2.4 billion in ETH and BTC remained held as of November 3.