Elliptic: Drift attack incident suspected to be carried out by North Korean hackers

ME News message, April 2 (UTC+8), blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said the Drift Protocol suffered losses of $285 million in an attack, and that “multiple signs” point to a DPRK hacker group supported by North Korea. Elliptic focused on analyzing on-chain behavior, money-laundering methods, and network-layer signals, all of which matched previously observed attacks linked to states. Elliptic’s report said: “If confirmed, this would be the 18th DPRK attack operation Elliptic has tracked this year, with more than $300 million stolen to date.” On the technical side, Elliptic described the attack as “premeditated and meticulously planned,” with early test transactions and pre-deployed wallets carried out before the main attack. After the attack was executed, the funds were quickly consolidated and transferred across chains, converted into assets with higher liquidity, forming a set of organized and repeatable money-laundering procedures designed to obscure the source of funds while maintaining control. The incident involved more than 10 types of assets. Funds were transferred from Solana across chains to Ethereum and other chains, further highlighting the importance of cross-chain traceability. Drift Protocol is the largest decentralized perpetual contract trading platform on the Solana blockchain, and since the hack, its token has fallen by more than 40% to about $0.06. (Source: ChainCatcher)