The U.S. Justice Department has obtained court authorization to seize or restrain more than $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency stolen from Binance. Its November 12 announcement says government and private-sector efforts have frozen more than $2.7 billion overall. Those figures do not mean the money has been returned to victims.
The underlying theft occurred around October 29. In an October 31 alert, the FBI attributed the loss of more than $6 billion to North Korean activity it tracks as TraderTraitor. Recovery efforts remain ongoing.
Authorities separately disrupted cloud infrastructure supporting FaceStealer, a social engineering campaign targeting cryptocurrency professionals and open-source software maintainers. The FBI links that campaign to more than $400 million in thefts over 18 months and says it seized over 900 secretly recorded victim webcam videos.
A new FBI advisory explains how attackers use hijacked accounts to invite contacts into counterfeit video meetings. Prerecorded footage makes familiar people appear present. A fabricated audio or technical problem then becomes the excuse for asking the target to install an update or run instructions that deliver malware.
For developers, the exposure extends beyond wallets: compromised devices can provide access to software repositories. The FBI recommends opening official meeting applications with an invite code, verifying invitations through another channel, and refusing requests to run scripts or paste terminal commands to repair a video call.
