Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at an alleged North Korean cyberattack on Binance, Israel’s parliamentary election results, and mixed NATO messaging on Russia’s threat to Europe.
$6.36 Billion in 20 Minutes
Hackers targeted the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange late Thursday, stealing more than $6 billion in under 30 minutes. Experts are calling it the biggest crypto heist in history, and initial investigations suggest that North Korea is to blame.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at an alleged North Korean cyberattack on Binance, Israel’s parliamentary election results, and mixed NATO messaging on Russia’s threat to Europe.
$6.36 Billion in 20 Minutes
Hackers targeted the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange late Thursday, stealing more than $6 billion in under 30 minutes. Experts are calling it the biggest crypto heist in history, and initial investigations suggest that North Korea is to blame.
According to U.S.-based blockchain research firm TRM Labs, an elite North Korean hacking unit called TraderTraitor targeted $6.36 billion in Binance digital coins spread across 10 blockchains. The hackers were unable to access consumer accounts, instead only affecting Binance corporate holdings. Around $3 billion in assets have already been located or frozen, but TRM Labs estimates that the hackers had moved roughly $2.4 billion in crypto coins “beyond any issuer’s reach.”
“Your assets are safe,” Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said on Friday in a statement intended to ease customers’ concerns. However, analysts argue that the heist—despite its limited impact on consumers—has exposed the risks of trading crypto as well as the growing prowess of North Korean hacking efforts.
Cryptocurrency is a relatively new phenomenon in the world of economics—and one that is still largely unregulated. In June 2024, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump vowed to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet” if elected for a second term, and since then, he has focused on reducing aggressive oversight of the lucrative industry. He also launched his own cryptocurrency platform, World Liberty Financial, which is run by his two sons, as well his own meme coin cryptocurrency.
Some countries, such as Russia, have turned to cryptocurrency to help evade sanctions and procure sensitive dual-use goods. Crypto companies have also faced a slew of cyberattacks. In December 2022, South Korea’s spy agency accused North Korean hackers of stealing roughly $1.1 billion in cryptocurrency and other virtual assets over the course of five years. Such hackers came under scrutiny again in February 2025, when the FBI said that TraderTraitor stole $1.5 billion from Bybit, one of Binance’s top rivals. And last month, attackers took around $350 million from cryptocurrency exchange Bitget.
A Binance spokesperson told The Associated Press on Friday that the company is “working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of the criminals and bring them to justice.” However, TRM Labs said that its analysts had “high confidence” in the company’s assessment that the North Korean hacking group is responsible.
“North Korean hackers are among the world’s most aggressive and highly skilled cyber actors,” former South Korean Vice Defense Minister Shin Beom-chul told the Financial Times on Friday. Last year alone, Pyongyang’s hackers stole around $2 billion in cryptocurrency, accounting for roughly 60 percent of total crypto heists in the world, according to estimates from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.
Bitcoin’s value plummeted more than 5 percent overnight Thursday into Friday in response to the Binance heist, and other cryptocurrency exchanges dropped as much as 9 percent.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Israel’s coalition talks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have lost their parliamentary majority, final election results confirmed on Friday. Although Netanyahu’s Likud bloc still has the most seats in the Knesset, a historic showing by unaligned Arab parties means that lawmakers likely have several weeks of intense coalition-building negotiations ahead of them before a new government can be formed. In the interim, Netanyahu remains in charge.
According to the final results, Netanyahu’s Likud-led bloc won 53 seats, main opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party-led alliance won 48 seats, and Arab-led groups won a record 19 seats. If Eisenkot wants to dethrone Netanyahu, then he will likely need to ally with the Arab parties to secure a majority. However, Eisenkot may be loath to do so, as one of his key partners, right-wing lawmaker Avigdor Lieberman, has ruled out joining a coalition with the predominately Arab Joint List or Raam parties.
Netanyahu has capitalized on such hesitance, accusing Qatar of funneling money into Israel to support the Arab vote. Israel’s elections committee said the “allegations of systematic violations of electoral integrity are baseless,” and the Qatari government dismissed Netanyahu’s accusations as “ridiculous and dangerous.” Yet Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet has promised to investigate the claims.
Pentagon messaging on Moscow. The Trump administration has urged several NATO members in recent weeks to water down their rhetoric regarding the threat that Russia poses to Europe, Reuters reported on Friday. Sources said that senior U.S. defense officials, including Defense Department policy chief Elbridge Colby, have urged Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to dial down their warnings, arguing that they are not helpful for ongoing peace talks. Russian hybrid warfare, including drone incursions, has hit all three NATO members in the past year.
U.S. negotiators are reportedly considering new incentives to end the Russia-Ukraine war, including possible sanctions relief for and business deals with Moscow. Last week, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff held separate talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin; during talks with Putin, Witkoff called the Russian leader a “humanitarian” and announced that negotiations would soon begin on the technical level.
The report about the Pentagon’s urgings also came on the same day as a G-20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attended in person. Deep rifts among the attendees prompted U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to cancel the group’s traditional family photo, as many participants balked at standing beside Lavrov. Several European leaders have accused the Trump administration of being too soft on Moscow.
Global port strike. Dockworkers in 22 countries went on strike on Friday to protest the use of ports for arms exports and, specifically, for the delivery of weapons to active war zones. More than 25 unions across 113 ports—from Southern Europe to North Africa and India—backed the protests, which are in support of the so-called Istanbul Declaration, a document signed in May by dockworker unions from more than 35 European ports that demands an end to arms shipments from their sites.
“From planes to tanks, guns to bullets, explosives to ammunition, uniforms to boots, our ports have become replenishing and forwarding bases for war and genocide,” unions said at a press conference held to announce the strike. The Global Sumud Flotilla, a pro-Palestinian maritime activist group that has repeatedly tried to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza to deliver humanitarian supplies, also vowed to support Friday’s movement.
It is unclear how disruptive the 24-hour demonstration might be. Organizers said that the strike could impact more than 40 percent of Mediterranean cargo and around $2 billion worth of freight. However, shipping experts suspect that global trade will not be significantly hurt. Still, FP energy reporter Keith Johnson told World Brief that the strike “is more sand in the gears of a global economy already strained by U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade wars and real wars, both of which have sent freight rates to nosebleed levels this autumn.”
What in the World?
How did right-wing presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro react to incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s runoff election victory on Sunday?
A. He graciously conceded defeat.
B. He called for his followers to protest his loss in Brasília.
C. He fled to Chile.
D. He said he would request an annulment of the election.
Odds and Ends
For a small sum of $56 million, you too can be the owner of a famous Impressionist painting. Claude Monet’s Iris became the most expensive artwork sold at auction in France last Thursday. The massive canvas, depicting some of Monet’s favorite flowers in his Giverny garden, is part of a 20-piece series produced near the end of the artist’s life. It took the title of most expensive work sold at a French auction from sculptor Amedeo Modigliani’s Head of a Caryatid, which sold for around $48 million in 2010.
And the Answer Is…
D. He said he would request an annulment of the election.
Lula became the first Brazilian presidential candidate in history to come from behind to win the election’s second round, FP’s Catherine Osborn reports. Bolsonaro, the subject of several criminal probes, subsequently fled to Miami, where he called himself “the leader of Brazil.”
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