North Korea-linked $280M Drift hack spurs 12 DeFi breaches; Tether injects $148M while investors sue Circle

Drift Protocol suffered a large exploit on April 1 that resulted in roughly $280 million in losses and triggered a wave of follow‑on breaches affecting a dozen or more DeFi platforms, according to contemporaneous reporting and post‑incident analyses. Some investigators reported the attackers had operated covertly for months and used fraudulent on‑chain behavior to siphon funds during the incident ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

Tether moved to support Drift’s recovery by committing roughly $147.5–$148 million and Drift announced plans to adopt Tether’s USDT as its primary settlement infrastructure, citing failures in handling USDC flows during the hack. Separately, investors have filed a lawsuit alleging Circle failed to freeze stolen USDC that moved through Circle’s bridge during the incident; reporting notes approximately $232 million in USDC transfers of concern and criticizes Circle’s response to those on‑chain movements ^{[1] [4] [5] [6]}.

The incident has produced layered consequences — emergency liquidity from a major stablecoin issuer, a spate of related protocol breaches, and legal action focused on custodial and bridge response — with recovery and investigations still unfolding ^{[2] [1] [5]}.