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North Korean hackers' long game ⏳
DPRK hackers spent six months on a social engineering operation to inveigle their way into Solana DEX Drift Protocol before making off with $285 million.
Stephen Graves
April 06, 2026
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📝 What you need to know
North Korea’s state-sponsored hacking initiatives are getting bolder—and more sophisticated. Solana DEX Drift Protocol, which was hacked for $285 million last week, has revealed that the perpetrators were likely DPRK hacking group UNC4736, and that they spent some six months posing as a quantitative trading firm to infiltrate Drift’s systems.
The hackers’ campaign encompassed fabricated professional identities, third-party intermediaries recruited for in-person meetings at crypto conferences, and malicious developer tools, before the drain was executed, Drift said. Security experts warned that crypto firms now face adversaries that “operate more like intelligence units than hackers,” and that they are underprepared for the threat.
North Korea shows no signs of slowing down as it adds to its multi-billion-dollar stockpile of stolen crypto, with DPRK hackers making away $300 million in crypto across 18 confirmed hacks in 2026 alone, blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic said.
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