North Korea hackers blamed for $290M crypto theft

Hackers stole over $290 million in cryptocurrency from Kelp DAO, a DeFi yield protocol, making it the largest crypto theft of 2026 so far. LayerZero, whose bridge was exploited in the attack, attributed the hack to North Korea's TraderTraitor group with preliminary indicators. The attackers exploited Kelp DAO's security configuration that lacked multi-verification requirements for transactions. Kelp DAO pushed back, blaming LayerZero's default settings. North Korean hackers have stolen over $2 billion in crypto in 2025 alone, with a total of around $6 billion since 2017.