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. 

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