Drift Protocol’s $285 Million Heist Started With a Handshake and 6 Months of Trust
Drift Protocol’s $285 million exploit was the result of a six-month social engineering operation by North Korean state-backed actors who built trust with the team.Summary
Drift Protocol revealed that its $285 million exploit on April 1st was the result of a sophisticated, six-month intelligence operation conducted by North Korean state-sponsored actors. The attackers posed as a quantitative trading firm, attending industry conferences, engaging in Telegram conversations, and even deploying real capital to build trust with Drift contributors. They exploited vulnerabilities in VSCode and Cursor, gaining access through cloned code repositories and a malicious TestFlight application. Industry experts are warning of a new level of sophistication in cybercrime, with calls for a security reset across the crypto ecosystem. Drift has frozen protocol functions and is working with Mandiant to investigate, while urging teams to audit their security measures and treat all devices as potential targets.
(Source：BeInCrypto)