North Korean hackers linked to $290M crypto heist

A group of North Korean hackers is suspected of stealing the equivalent of $290 million last weekend, according to one of the platforms involved, making it the largest digital asset theft of the year, AFP reported on Wednesday.

Crypto-focused outlet CoinDesk reported that a cyberattack took place on Saturday targeting KelpDAO, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform specializing in restaking (reinvesting staked cryptocurrencies to generate additional rewards), CE Report quotes AGERPRES.

During the hack, two servers hosted by another application, LayerZero, were compromised, KelpDAO said.

This vulnerability allowed hackers to “drain” tokens linked to Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization after Bitcoin.

“On April 18, 2026, KelpDAO was the victim of an attack that resulted in a loss of approximately $290 million,” LayerZero said in a statement.

“Initial indications suggest this attack was carried out by a highly sophisticated state-backed actor, likely the North Korean Lazarus Group,” the application added.

This theft “will make entering the DeFi world more intimidating for newcomers,” warned Henri Arslanian, co-founder of Nine Blocks Capital Management.

In his view, “it is clearly the work of the Lazarus Group from North Korea.”

“No other group in the world has the expertise and capability to carry out such a hack,” he emphasized on Wednesday.

In 2024, a UN panel of experts estimated that North Korea had stolen over $3 billion in cryptocurrencies since 2017 to fund its nuclear weapons program.

The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), tasked with enforcing UN sanctions related to North Korea, found that North Korean hackers stole at least $1.65 billion between January and September 2025.

Of that amount, $1.4 billion was stolen in February 2025 from the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit.