The National Agency for Virtual Assets and Blockchain Technologies (NAVA) urged Kyrgyzstan’s citizens to strengthen the security of their accounts, crypto wallets and virtual assets following a large-scale cyberattack on international cryptocurrency platform Binance.
The agency warned of fraud risks involving fake websites, malicious links and attempts to gain unauthorized access to user accounts.
NAVA recommends enabling two-factor authentication, using strong and unique passwords, avoiding suspicious links, and never sharing passwords, verification codes, private keys or wallet recovery phrases with third parties.
“If necessary, up-to-date information can be obtained directly from NAVA. In addition, before using the services of virtual asset providers, users should check whether they hold a license by consulting NAVA’s official registers,” the agency said.
Binance announced a major information security incident today. According to the company’s preliminary findings, attackers may have gained access to one of its systems through an engineer’s compromised laptop. This enabled them to carry out unauthorized transactions to withdraw funds. Binance said, however, that there was no evidence of private wallet keys being compromised.
The platform estimated that the incident affected assets worth approximately $6.3 billion. With the assistance of its partners, around $3 billion of these assets were frozen. The status of the remaining $3.3 billion had not been clarified in the company’s latest statement.
According to preliminary assessments by analytics firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis, the attack may have been carried out by the North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor, which is linked to the Lazarus Group. Experts have pointed to similarities between the methods used in the incident and those used in previous attacks attributed to the group. However, no perpetrators have been officially identified.
