North Korea tied to heists worth $578M in April after Kelp DAO exploit
DPRK-linked crypto theft topped $578M in April after the Kelp DAO exploit, as attacks continue to expand across protocols, companies and end users.
Kelp DAO suffered a $292 million hack on Saturday, overtaking Drift as the largest crypto exploit of the year so far. North Korea-linked hackers are suspected to be behind the attack.
Kelp DAO said Monday that the exploit stemmed from a failure of cross-chain messaging protocol LayerZero’s infrastructure. LayerZero said the breach was enabled by Kelp DAO’s use of a single verifier configuration to approve cross-chain messages.
LayerZero said that “preliminary indicators” attributed the exploit to TraderTraitor, a subgroup of North Korea’s state-backed hacking unit known as Lazarus Group.