US wins court approval to seize $1.2bn stolen in Binance hack

Here's what happened. The US Justice Department said on Thursday that a court has authorised it to seize and hold more than $1.2bn taken in the Binance hack. That sum is part of more than $2.7bn that US authorities and private companies have frozen so far, the department said.

Binance, the crypto exchange, was hit on or about 29 October, with more than $6bn stolen, according to CoinDesk. The FBI blames a North Korean military-linked group it calls TraderTraitor.

The department also announced a second action. It seized cloud servers used in a scheme called FaceStealer, which the FBI says took more than $400m in crypto over 18 months. Victims were lured into fake video calls that looked like Zoom or Teams, sometimes with deepfakes, then told to install software to fix a made-up technical fault. That software was malware. The FBI also seized more than 900 webcam videos.

Put it in context. The order shows how much can be stopped when exchanges and investigators move quickly. A Justice Department official said its cybercrime team helped halt about half of the breach.