The FBI blames North Korea for stealing $6 billion from Binance and urges crypto firms to block transactions linked to the stolen funds. The FBI has named North Korea as the party behind the theft of more than $6 billion in virtual assets from the crypto exchange Binance, on or about October 29, 2026. The bureau published its findings in a public alert. The FBI specifically blames the North Korea-linked APT “TraderTraitor,” also tracked as Lazarus Group and APT38. Binance hasn’t named a culprit, but the blockchain analysis firm TRM has. It was the first to attribute the attack to TraderTraitor, and Chainalysis also said it’s highly confident in that finding. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is releasing information advising the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) was responsible for the theft of more than $6 billion USD in virtual assets from cryptocurrency exchange Binance, on or about October 29, 2026. The FBI refers to this specific North Korean malicious cyber activity as “TraderTraitor.”” reads the FBI’s statement. “The FBI, together with partners at the USSS and IRS-CI, has observed TraderTraitor actors converting stolen assets primarily into Ethereum (ETH). It is expected these assets will then be further laundered by converting them using DeFi and instant swap services as they prepare them for further laundering stages.” Attackers used access from an engineer’s laptop to reach a service container and send unauthorized withdrawal requests. Binance says it has found no evidence that attackers stole any wallet private keys. The FBI, along with the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), has spotted TraderTraitor actors turning the stolen assets mostly into Ethereum (ETH). The agencies expect the next step to be more laundering, by swapping the funds through DeFi and instant swap services as the actors prepare them for later stages. Instant swap services are aptly named. The alert is aimed at private companies as well as law enforcement agencies. The FBI, USSS and IRS-CI are asking several types of businesses to help stop the money laundering. These include THORNode operators, who support the THORChain network, RPC node operators, who provide apps with access to blockchains, instant crypto exchanges, DeFi platforms, blockchain analytics companies and other crypto service providers. The request is clear: these companies should block any transactions involving the wallet addresses used by TraderTraitor, including funds that can be traced back to them. According to the FBI, these addresses have received stolen funds and are controlled by North Korean attackers or are closely linked to them. The full list of addresses is included in the alert. If you run any of these services, the first job is to check your blocklists against that list. The second is to look at transaction flows that touch those addresses indirectly, since the FBI says to block anything “derived from” them, not just direct transfers. Blockchain analytics firms are named for a reason, because tracing derived funds is their work. The FBI says it’s committed to protecting the virtual asset community by identifying, mitigating and disrupting North Korea’s illicit cybercrime and virtual asset theft. “The FBI maintains its commitment to protecting the virtual asset community by identifying, mitigating, and disrupting North Korea’s illicit cybercrime and virtual asset theft activities.” concludes the report. “If you have any information to provide, please contact your local FBI field office or FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.” TRM says the attacker moved about $6.36 billion out of Binance wallets on ten blockchains on October 29, most of it in roughly 20 minutes starting at 20:05 UTC. That makes it the largest crypto theft on record, about four times the $1.5 billion Bybit hack of February 2025. “On October 29, 2026, an attacker moved approximately USD 6.36 billion out of Binance wallets on ten blockchains, most of it in about 20 minutes starting at 20:05 UTC. That makes this the largest crypto theft on record, about four times the USD 1.5 billion Bybit hack of February 2025. Binance has confirmed a security incident and suspended withdrawals on several networks.” TRM said. “TRM attributes the attack to TraderTraitor, North Korea’s elite hacking unit, based on robust on and off-chain intelligence. We make this judgment with high confidence. TRM is tracking the funds and alerting partners through the Beacon Network.” Freezing the money only went partway. Tether, Circle, Ripple and World Liberty Financial froze about $2.67 billion in stablecoins, and Arbitrum’s Security Council froze 8,426 ETH and 74.6 million ARB, for roughly $2.7 billion in all. But the attacker raced the freezes by selling USDT to market makers and borrowing ETH against USDT on Aave. It now holds more than 420,000 ETH and 18,270 BTC, about $2.4 billion beyond any issuer’s reach. The early freeze numbers were messy too, Tether and Circle froze approximately $1.79 billion in stablecoins associated with the suspicious transfers in the initial reports. Those amounts describe different moments, and you shouldn’t add them without checking whether they cover distinct assets. A freeze works on tokens that have an issuer to call, and Ether and Bitcoin don’t. Below is the link to my interview regarding the Binance case for Italian state television. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtvhBA9TdPo Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Binance)
SMS of Death lets attackers crash Android call services with a hidden, zero-click message, blocking phone calls, even emergency calls too. A specially manipulated SMS message is enough to crash Android’s phone service, interrupt ongoing calls, and temporarily render the smartphone unusable. The attack requires no interaction from the victim and can even compromise the ability to contact emergency services. The vulnerability, dubbed the SMS of Death, is bringing renewed attention to the security of the messaging system in Android smartphones. The issue, documented by independent researcher Mark Blaszczyk, allows a remote attacker to cause a disruption in phone service by sending a single, specially crafted WAP Push message. WAP Push (Wireless Application Protocol Push) is a particular message transmitted over the mobile network, generally in the form of a binary SMS, which contains structured data and is processed automatically by the smartphone without requiring user intervention. Unlike a traditional SMS, it can carry notifications, links to Internet resources, and configurations for mobile services. The most worrying aspect is the execution method. It’s a zero-click attack, in which the recipient doesn’t have to open the message, select a link, or authorize any action. The content is automatically processed by the operating system and can cause the process responsible for phone functionality to crash. The vulnerability affects “WapPushOverSms“, an Android framework component located in the “frameworks/opt/telephony” path, responsible for interpreting and managing WAP Push messages received by the device. The technical cause lies in the incorrect handling of a numeric value used during message interpretation. Specifically, the “decodeWapPdu()” function, the researcher explains, reads the length of the WSP header through a value encoded as “uintvar” , initially returned as a 64-bit number. The value is subsequently converted to a 32-bit integer without prior range checking. This operation can transform a seemingly valid number into a negative value, which is then used to determine the size of an array. The consequence of this is a “NegativeArraySizeException” exception, thrown when Android attempts to allocate a negative-sized array. The exception is not handled correctly in the processing path and causes the “com.android.phone” process, responsible for telephony functions, to terminate. The researcher demonstrated that a five-byte WSP header can generate the value “-2147483648“, which is sufficient to trigger the issue. Therefore, it is not necessary to transmit particularly large amounts of content to cause the issue. “A 5-byte uintvar of 88 80 80 80 00 decodes to 0x80000000. Cast to a signed 32-bit int, that is -2147483648. Allocating new byte[-2147483648] throws an uncaught NegativeArraySizeException on the telephony main thread, killing com.android.phone:” reads the analysis. An invisible attack that also interrupts emergency calls The message is transmitted as a data SMS via the WAP Push channel on port 2948. Unlike a regular SMS, it isn’t displayed in the message inbox and doesn’t generate a user-recognizable notification. The sender’s number isn’t normally visible in the conversation, and when the device receives the message, Android automatically starts processing it. A crash in the phone process causes a temporary loss of connectivity and interrupts active voice calls, including those to emergency services. According to the researcher’s published evidence, each message processing can cause a disruption in telephone service lasting about one to two seconds, during which the component is rebooted. However, the problem can become much more serious if the message is processed repeatedly. One of the most significant aspects of SMS of Death is the ability to transform a simple crash into a persistent Denial of Service condition. The malicious message can remain in the incoming SMS queue and be reprocessed during subsequent delivery attempts. The telephone operator’s retransmission mechanism can also contribute to a repeat of the event, causing further service disruptions. The researcher reports observing intermittent crashes for up to a week after receiving a single message. Sending around twenty specially crafted messages can render the device unusable for an extended period. In more severe cases, the phone process can continue to crash during system startup, triggering a condition similar to a boot loop. Recovery may require using the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) on a computer, directly intervening in the queue of messages waiting to be processed. For a typical user, this is far from a simple procedure. A threat to communications availability SMS of Death demonstrates how a cyberattack doesn’t necessarily have to involve information theft, code execution, or device control to have significant consequences. In this case, the target is phone service availability, a crucial feature especially when contacting emergency services. The ability to interrupt communications without any user interaction makes this vulnerability particularly sensitive. To reduce exposure, it’s important to check the Android security patch level installed and apply available updates, paying particular attention to devices no longer receiving manufacturer support. Testing conducted by Mark Blah has shown that the issue is reproducible on several devices, including the Google Pixel 9 and Samsung smartphones from the Galaxy and Galaxy A families. The vulnerable code appears to be present on Android versions ranging from Android 12 to Android 17. However, the availability of the fix is not uniform across all generations of the operating system. According to documentation published by the researcher, Google has distributed a fix via the October 2026 security update for Android 14, 15, 16, and 17. Older devices, such as those running Android 12 and 13, may remain exposed if they do not receive corrective updates. It's assigned CVE-2026-58882 and a Critical severity in the November 2026 Android Security Bulletin. We've had it listed as one of the patches included in our security preview releases since our 2026072901 release which you can see in the release notes:https://t.co/tBoWBpALw1 — GrapheneOS (@GrapheneOS) October 29, 2026 About the author: Salvatore Lombardo (X @Slvlombardo) Electronics engineer and Clusit member, for some time now, espousing the principle of conscious education, he has been writing for several online magazine on information security. He is also the author of the book “La Gestione della Cyber Security nella Pubblica Amministrazione”. “Education improves awareness” is his slogan. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, SMS of Death)
A critical flaw in Canonical's LXD and MicroCloud let an attacker log in as a trusted client without holding that client's private key. To do it, the attacker had to reach their HTTPS API over the network and have the trusted client's public certificate. Once in, the attacker would act as that client, with access to the cluster and its virtual machines. If the impersonated account is
Cloud application hosting platform Northflank is warning customers to rotate all credentials and secrets stored on its platform after a security breach led to unauthorized use of customers' AI API keys. Northflank is a cloud platform that allows developers to deploy and manage applications, containers, databases, and AI applications without managing the underlying infrastructure. The company disclosed a security incident on October 30, warning customers to immediately rotate their environment variables and API keys after receiving a threat alert from cloud security company Wiz. Soon after, Northflank told all customers to assume their environment variables had been decrypted and that the secrets stored within them were stolen. "Assume all environment variables have been decrypted. Disable/rotate all keys," Northflank warned in an October 30 update.
A security researcher has released a proof-of-concept exploit for a recently patched Android vulnerability, dubbed "SMS of Death" and tracked as CVE-2026-58882, that lets attackers remotely disrupt cellular service or crash phones by sending a specially crafted text message.
Blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis has disclosed a security incident after attackers used what it describes as "offensive agentic techniques" to gain unauthorized access to its internal systems and tools. The company says some customer information was accessed, including names, email addresses, user IDs, and organizational role labels, but claims there is no evidence that sensitive investigation data or authentication credentials were exposed. Chainalysis provides blockchain analytics tools used by law enforcement, government agencies, cryptocurrency exchanges, and financial institutions to trace cryptocurrency transactions and investigate crimes such as fraud, ransomware, and money laundering. On Friday, roughly 5:14 PM ET, Chainalysis published a security incident disclosure along with the full text of the email sent to affected customers.
American blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis said it was the target of a cybersecurity incident in which an external actor accessed non-sensitive customer data. However, the company noted that the breach did not result in unauthorized access to its investigation content, authentication credentials, or session tokens. "This month, Chainalysis detected an external actor using offensive agentic
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Friday added two security flaws impacting Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS) to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, following active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerabilities are listed below - CVE-2026-111357 (CVSS score: 8.8) - A missing authentication for a critical function vulnerability that could allow a
Threat actors are launching about 8,226 network-layer distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks per hour, Cloudflare revealed Thursday. The web infrastructure and security company said it autonomously mitigated 18.2 million network-layer (L3) DDoS attacks and 14.4 trillion HTTP DDoS requests in the third quarter of 2026. That amounts to 197,400 attacks per day, or one attack every 0.44
U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds GitLab and Cisco flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added GitLab and Cisco vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog: Below are the flaws added to the catalog: CVE-2026-97229 (CVSS score of 10.0) GitLab Community Edition and Enterprise Edition Integer Overflow or Wraparound vulnerability CVE-2026-76418 (CVSS score of 8.6) Cisco Secure Firewall ASA Software and Cisco Secure FTD Software Unchecked Return Value to NULL Pointer Dereference Vulnerability CVE-2026-97229 is a critical security flaw that could let attackers run code on its servers without logging in. The flaw affects Community Edition (CE) and Enterprise Edition (EE), it is an integer overflow bug caused by weak validation of regular expressions in CI/CD configurations. The issue affects GitLab versions 19.2 before 19.2.8, 19.3 before 19.3.5, and 19.4 before 19.4.2. Users should upgrade to a patched version to protect their systems. GitLab advisory “GitLab has remediated an issue that, under certain conditions, could have allowed an unauthenticated user to execute arbitrary code on the GitLab server via a specially crafted regular expression in a CI/CD configuration, due to insufficient regular expression validation.” reads the advisory. The researchers joaxcar reported this vulnerability through the company’s HackerOne bug bounty program. Alpine Linux recently reported that an unknown attacker tried to exploit the vulnerability against Alpine Linux on October 20 and 21, 2026, but the attempts failed. CVE-2026-76418 is a NULL pointer dereference vulnerability affecting Cisco Secure Firewall ASA and FTD Software. It could allow an unauthenticated remote attacker to force a device to reload, causing a denial-of-service (DoS) condition. Cisco said it became aware of active exploitation earlier this month. The company has not disclosed who is behind the attacks, how many organizations have been targeted, or what attackers may have done after gaining access. According to Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities, FCEB agencies have to address the identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect their networks against attacks exploiting the flaws in the catalog. Experts also recommend that private organizations review the Catalog and address the vulnerabilities in their infrastructure. CISA orders federal agencies to fix the two vulnerabilities by November 1st, 2026. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, CISA)
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