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Hackers infiltrated an AI startup that works with Uber, stealing personal information belonging to thousands of Uber drivers. Workplace software company Notion was also affected by the same breach.
U.S. authorities have seized or restrained over $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency stolen from Binance's $6 billion October hack, which the FBI attributes to North Korean military-linked hackers known as TraderTraitor. The DOJ also disrupted cloud infrastructure behind a separate deepfake scam called FaceStealer, which stole more than $400 million over 18 months using AI-generated video impersonations.
The FBI says North Korean hackers used staged video calls to trick cryptocurrency industry targets into downloading malware disguised as an audio 'fix.' Once installed, the malware gave attackers access to victims' contacts and apps, which they used to expand the scope of the scheme and ultimately steal roughly $400 million in crypto assets.
France's Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs formally blamed Shahid Kaveh, a unit tied to Iran's IRGC, for cyberattacks that hit roughly 700 retail sites overnight on October 11-12. Hackers altered defrost settings on industrial refrigeration controllers, causing tens of millions of euros in food losses, significant damage, and at least 15 fires at chains including Casino, Leclerc, Carrefour and Intermarché. Investigators also found related attacks on Schneider Electric equipment at small hydroelectric plants, and a second wave hit over 115 stores across six European countries in November.
In a Decoder podcast interview, Alex Stamos, chief security officer at Cognition and a Stanford Cyber Policy Center lecturer, said the cybersecurity industry is struggling to keep pace with AI-boosted hacking. He described both private hackers and state actors like Russia and North Korea using AI to find and exploit vulnerabilities faster than defenders can respond.
Binance disclosed that North Korean hackers posed as job recruiters to contact a wallet-team engineer, then convinced them to download a malicious 'coding assignment' that bypassed the company's security tools. The initial breach let attackers pivot through an internal tool to compromise two more engineers' machines, eventually gaining access to systems controlling billions in crypto assets, resulting in a record $6.3 billion theft.
Binance published a security update attributing last week's theft of $6.34 billion from its wallets to a social-engineering attack in which an engineer downloaded malicious software during a fake job interview. The exchange said hackers used that foothold to move through its network, exploit an internal AI tool, and access a wallet signing service to make unauthorized transactions outside normal withdrawal controls on October 29.
Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said attackers spent months infiltrating the exchange's systems, starting in June with a fake developer tool that compromised an engineer's device, followed by sham job interviews in September that delivered hidden malware. The intruders then moved through Binance's internal AI tools to gain access to wallet transaction authorization, resulting in the Oct. 29 theft of more than $6.3 billion in assets. Teng said Binance has restored 98% of the affected funds and is still buying back remaining illiquid assets.
Binance published an incident report attributing its October 29 theft of roughly $6.34 billion in crypto to North Korean state-linked hackers tracked as TraderTraitor/Lazarus Group. The exchange says an engineer was lured via a fake recruiter on a legitimate job platform, underwent staged interviews, and was tricked into downloading a malicious coding assignment that installed custom malware, eventually compromising Binance's wallet infrastructure. The FBI has also attributed the attack to the same North Korean group.
CrowdStrike reports that a China-nexus threat actor it tracks as Vapor Panda used the ARTEX AI penetration-testing framework, alongside DeepSeek and another commercial language model, to target over 200 organizations in 14 countries starting October 17. The campaign hit government ministries, telecoms, pharmaceutical, semiconductor, defense, nuclear and financial sector targets, compromising at least nine organizations and conducting password spraying and credential scanning against at least a dozen more.
Security firms and law enforcement are attempting to trace and recover more than $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency stolen from Binance, with TRM Labs and Chainalysis attributing the breach to North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor. Binance says it will cover user losses through its Secure Asset Fund for Users, while stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether have frozen roughly $3 billion of the stolen funds.
Blockchain analysts say attackers tied to North Korea stole $6.3 billion from Binance in a matter of minutes. The theft reportedly exploited a contract that took advantage of a recent Ethereum network upgrade to drain funds at speed.