LayerZero Attributes $290 Million Kelp Exploit to Poor Setup and North Korean Hackers

LayerZero has attributed the $290 million exploit of Kelp DAO to a security vulnerability in Kelp's setup, stating that the protocol's use of a single verifier made it susceptible to attack. The company claims that the attackers, who have been linked to North Korea's Lazarus Group, compromised two RPC nodes and launched a DDoS attack on other nodes to force a failover, allowing them to steal 116,500 rsETH. LayerZero had previously warned Kelp about the risks of a single-verifier setup and recommended a multi-verifier configuration, which would have prevented the attack. The company has confirmed that there has been no contagion to other applications on the protocol and has announced that it will no longer support single-verifier setups. The attack has highlighted the importance of robust security configurations in DeFi protocols and the need for vigilance against increasingly sophisticated threats.