Binance Security Breach: Consumer Exposure and Interim Safeguards

Debate between Lord Pitt-Watson and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Tuesday 3rd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister ask his officials to provide for him a copy of the House of Lords Written Question HL4338 from December 2017? That contained warnings about the ability of North Korea to hack cryptocurrency and to commit cyber robbery—2017 being the year of the attack by North Korea on our National Health Service. Will the Minister ask his officials what notice was taken of those warnings? In light of the evasion of sanctions and the recycling of revenues into nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles programmes, what progress is being made in tracing the stolen assets and identifying those responsible? Will the Minister agree to meet the officers of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Crypto and Digital Assets?

[Lord Pitt-Watson (Lab)]

I would be very happy to meet, but I wonder whether there is a misunderstanding here. Binance, which is the institution that has been hacked, is not authorised in the UK. It is not registered in the UK; it is a foreign entity. While I am sure that there will be lessons to be learned from the issues that the noble Lord is talking about, what happened with Binance did not happen under any registration in the UK.