{"id":8779,"date":"2026-05-01T06:17:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T06:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=8779"},"modified":"2026-05-01T06:17:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T06:17:34","slug":"april-sets-record-for-crypto-hacks-as-exploits-surge-past-20-incidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=8779","title":{"rendered":"April Sets Record for Crypto Hacks as Exploits Surge Past 20 Incidents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<div id=\"blockquote-block_8ba0ea1a7e1b52df772f78d91a57dc75\" class=\"blockquote-container\" style=\"border-color: #5100fc\">\n<div class=\"blockquote-text\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DeFiLlama tracked 28 crypto hacks in April 2026, with total losses reaching US$635.2 million by month-end.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">KelpDAO and Drift Trade accounted for US$578 million, or roughly 91% of April\u2019s tracked losses.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chainalysis said the KelpDAO bridge exploit exposed off-chain verification risk rather than a conventional smart-contract failure.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>April became the most hack-filled month in crypto by incident count, with DeFiLlama tracking 28 exploits and US$635.2 million (AU$882.0 million) in losses as two infrastructure failures dominated the damage.<\/p>\n<p>DeFiLlama\u2019s hack database showed KelpDAO as April\u2019s largest incident at US$293 million (AU$407.3 million), followed by Drift Protocol at US$285 million (AU$396.2 million). Together, the two attacks accounted for US$578 million (AU$803.4 million), or roughly 91% of all April losses tracked by the database.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"\/>\n<p>The rest of the month was smaller but broader. DeFiLlama listed Rhea Lend at US$18.4 million (AU$25.6 million), Grinex at US$15 million (AU$20.9 million), Wasabi Perps at US$5.5 million (AU$7.6 million) and more than 20 additional incidents across DeFi, wallets and infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related: Strategy\u2019s High-Yield Stock Will Continue to Fuel Bitcoin Surge, Says Bitwise CIO<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-kelpdao-bridge-failure\">KelpDAO Bridge Failure<\/h2>\n<p>Chainalysis said attackers linked to North Korea\u2019s Lazarus Group stole about US$292 million (AU$405.9 million), or 116,500 rsETH, from KelpDAO\u2019s LayerZero bridge on April 18. The blockchain analysis firm said the incident was \u201cnot a smart contract vulnerability\u201d but an attack on off-chain infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>According to Chainalysis, compromised RPC nodes and denial-of-service pressure against external nodes fed false data to a 1-of-1 verifier setup. The result was a transaction that appeared valid to the system even though the underlying state was falsified.<\/p>\n<p>KelpDAO paused contracts after the exploit and blocked a second attempted theft of 40,000 rsETH, worth about US$95 million (AU$132.1 million), Chainalysis said. The Arbitrum Security Council also froze 30,766 ETH of downstream attacker funds, limiting part of the follow-on movement.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-aave-liquidity-shock\">Aave Liquidity Shock<\/h2>\n<p>The KelpDAO bridge adapter released 116,500 rsETH in a single block, after which the attacker looped collateral across Aave, Compound and Euler for about US$236 million (AU$328.0 million) in WETH and wstETH within 46 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Aave V3 Ethereum Core available liquidity fell from US$9.77 billion (AU$13.58 billion) to US$5.75 billion (AU$7.99 billion) within 29 hours, according to Glassnode.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>WETH available liquidity dropped from US$689 million (AU$957.7 million) at 5:00 p.m. UTC to US$1.5 million (AU$2.1 million) by 7:00 p.m. UTC on April 18 as utilisation reached 100%.<\/p>\n<p>Glassnode said protocol contracts, oracles and liquidation engines worked as specified, but the episode still exposed how bridge verification failures can cascade into lending-market liquidity stress.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Aave,Hackers#April #Sets #Record #Crypto #Hacks #Exploits #Surge #Incidents1777616254<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DeFiLlama tracked 28 crypto hacks in April 2026, with total losses reaching US$635.2 million by month-end. KelpDAO and Drift Trade accounted for US$578 million, or roughly 91% of April\u2019s tracked losses. Chainalysis said the KelpDAO bridge exploit exposed off-chain verification risk rather than a conventional smart-contract failure. April became the most hack-filled month in crypto<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1611,62,3495,594,4299,245,1672,456],"class_list":{"0":"post-8779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bitcoin","8":"tag-april","9":"tag-crypto","10":"tag-exploits","11":"tag-hacks","12":"tag-incidents","13":"tag-record","14":"tag-sets","15":"tag-surge"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v26.6) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>April Sets Record for Crypto Hacks as Exploits Surge Past 20 Incidents - Crypto News: Latest Cryptocurrency News and Analysis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cryptonews.uk.com\/?p=8779\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"April Sets Record for Crypto Hacks as Exploits Surge Past 20 Incidents\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"DeFiLlama tracked 28 crypto hacks in April 2026, with total losses reaching US$635.2 million by month-end. 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