Record 207 Crypto Hacks Expose Weak Spot In Digital Asset Security

Crypto hackers carried out 207 separate breaches in the first half of 2026, the highest six-month total ever recorded, stealing $972 million as incidents more than doubled.

Key Points

Crypto Hacks Surge

Blockchain security firm TRM Labs recorded 207 crypto hacks across the first six months of 2026, the most in any half-year period the firm has tracked. Smart contract exploits drove much of the surge, accounting for 125 of the incidents, or roughly 60% of all breaches. The median loss per incident stood at about $219,000, while the mean topped $4.7 million, reflecting a handful of outsized breaches.

Total losses nonetheless fell to $972 million, less than half of the $2.3 billion stolen during the same period in 2025.

Attacks intensified as the year progressed. Q2 alone produced 123 incidents, a new quarterly record, following an already elevated first quarter.

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North Korea Drives Losses

North Korean-linked hackers accounted for about 66% of the roughly $972 million stolen during the half, according to TRM Labs.

That marks a slight pullback from a 76% share earlier in the year, though the country's dominance has grown steadily since 2020, when it accounted for less than 10% of global hack losses.

Two attacks in April, against restaking protocol KelpDAO and trading platform Drift Protocol, together drained $577 million and made up the bulk of the total attributed to the group.

The KelpDAO breach alone cost $292 million after attackers forged verification data on a cross-chain bridge to mint tokens with no real backing. The stolen assets were later funneled through cross-chain platform THORChain and swapped into Bitcoin (BTC), according to blockchain investigators.

The fraudulent tokens were then pledged as collateral on lending platform Aave, whose total value locked plunged by billions within two days. The exploit forced the platform to freeze the affected markets before losses could spread further. The episode intensified an already bearish mood in decentralized finance markets.

TRM Labs said infrastructure and custody failures, rather than smart contract bugs, accounted for roughly three-quarters of the money lost, pointing to operational security lagging behind the industry's growing on-chain complexity.

Hacks have compounded a rough stretch for decentralized finance, with total value locked across DeFi protocols falling from about $115 billion in January to roughly $70 billion by late June, a two-year low. Only a handful of major blockchains, including Tron, added value during the period, while most top networks recorded double-digit declines. Bitcoin fell more than 28% and Ether (ETH) dropped over 40% during the same stretch, deepening pressure on protocols already grappling with lower deposits.

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