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Elliptic Flags $285 Million Drift Exploit as a Likely North Korea-Linked Operation
- On Wednesday, April 1, Drift Protocol suspended deposits and withdrawals after confirming a security incident, with Arkham data showing attackers moved over $250 million from the platform to interim wallets.
- Elliptic reported Thursday that the exploit, estimated at around $285 million, bears "multiple indicators" of North Korea's state-sponsored DPRK hacker group involvement, marking the largest crypto theft this year.
- Drift, the largest decentralized perpetual futures exchange on the Solana blockchain, saw its token value drop over 40% to roughly $0.06 following the hack, affecting more than a dozen asset types.
- The Treasury Department noted last month that North Korea utilizes stolen cryptoassets to finance its nuclear weapons program, with security firms estimating the regime netted at least $2 billion in stolen cryptocurrency last year.
- Elliptic analysis reveals attackers utilized cross-chain laundering to convert funds into liquid assets, with investigators risking seeing only "fragments of the attacker" activity without entity-level tracking and holistic cross-chain tracing capabilities.
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IT Security News - cybersecurity, infosecurity news
IT Security News - cybersecurity, infosecurity newsDe-fi platform Drift suspends deposits and withdrawals after millions in crypto stolen in hack
Blockchain trackers put the cryptocurrency heist in the hundreds of millions of dollars and is already on track to be the largest crypto theft in 2026 so far.
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Drift Protocol's $285m hack exposes social engineering threat to Solana DeFi
Drift Protocol, a major Solana-based DeFi exchange, has suffered a $285 million social engineering-driven exploit that weaponized a compromised administrator key rather than any code flaw. Drift Protocol, a decentralized exchange built on Solana, was drained of approximately $285 million…
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Total News Sources30
Leaning Left1Leaning Right0Center2Last UpdatedBias Distribution67% Center
Bias Distribution
- 67% of the sources are Center
67% Center
L 33%
C 67%
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