Lazarus Group Leads Crypto Hacks, Draining Over $1 Billion from DeFi Protocols

The crypto industry has seen significant losses in 2026 due to hacks, with DeFi protocols losing at least $1.3 billion in the first eight months of the year. According to Forbes and CertiK, compromised private keys have become the leading attack vector, overtaking smart contract bugs for the first time on record.

The Drift Protocol lost $285 million after attackers social-engineered their way to an admin key and drained the protocol in 128 seconds. KelpDAO lost $290 million 17 days later through a single compromised verifier on its LayerZero bridge. Both hacks were attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group, with at least $575 million of losses linked to this group alone.

Bridge infrastructure remains a dominant failure point, with AFX Trade, VerusCoin, and the Cosmos EVM underflow chain all experiencing cross-chain verification layer breaks that led to significant losses. The Coldcard hardware wallet exploit also highlighted the problem of compromised keys, as attackers were able to brute-force their way into thousands of wallets.

CertiK's Hack3d H1 2026 report and Forbes both put total crypto hack losses at $1.3 billion through the first half of the year, with TRM Labs arriving at a similar figure noting that losses were trending just below the $1 billion mark for DeFi alone.