North Korea (PG) [Produced by Kang Min-ji]

An analysis has found that $1.1 billion (approximately 1.6 trillion won) in virtual assets was stolen globally in the first half of this year, with more than half of the total losses attributed to incidents suspected to be the work of North Korea.

Blockchain security firm BlockAid released its '2026 First Half On-Chain Security Report' on the 28th, stating that it reached this conclusion after analyzing 212 virtual asset exploit (vulnerability attack) incidents.

The number of virtual asset hacking incidents in the first half of this year has already surpassed three times the total number of incidents for all of last year, marking the highest figure recorded on a semi-annual basis.

The report identified the two largest hacking incidents in terms of losses in the first half as being the work of 'TraderTraitor,' a sub-organization of the North Korean hacking group Lazarus.

The largest loss occurred in the hacking of the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform 'Kelp DAO,' where $292 million (approximately 426.4 billion won) was stolen.

Another DeFi platform, 'Drift,' was also found to have suffered hacking losses of $285 million (approximately 416.1 billion won) in less than 12 minutes.

TraderTraitor, the entity behind these incidents, is also known to have been responsible for the $1.5 billion (approximately 2.19 trillion won) hacking of the virtual asset exchange Bybit that occurred in February of last year.

The report explained that targeting the vulnerabilities of smart contracts (technology that automatically executes transactions between parties when certain conditions are met on the blockchain) remains the most common type of hacking.

However, it noted that in the first half of the year, attacks targeted various vulnerabilities including private keys, signatures, bridge infrastructure, and backend systems, with damages from attacks on operating systems other than smart contracts accounting for 74% of the total.

BlockAid advised that as more institutions adopt stablecoins, asset tokenization, and on-chain payments, protecting the overall infrastructure and operating systems of digital assets has become increasingly important.

Ido Ben-Natan, CEO and co-founder of BlockAid, said, "Attackers are no longer just breaching code; they are attacking the systems and access points that manage virtual assets."

He added, "As digital assets have become a part of the broader financial system, institutions must implement security strategies that can protect the entire transaction process, from authorization to execution."