The US government has obtained court approval to freeze and recover a large cache of digital assets stolen during a security breach at the Binance cryptocurrency exchange last month. The seized funds, totaling more than $1.2 billion, are linked to a larger $6 billion heist carried out by state-sponsored hackers from North Korea, which the Justice Department says the regime uses to bankroll its illicit weapons program.
In a separate action, the FBI dismantled the infrastructure of a social engineering operation known as FaceStealer, which stole more than $400 million in crypto over the past 18 months. The campaign used secretly recorded webcam footage of more than 900 victims to impersonate trusted contacts in video calls on Zoom and Microsoft Teams, tricking targets into installing malware that gave hackers access to sensitive credentials and cryptocurrency.
