April's $621 Million in DeFi Hacks Traced Mostly to Stolen Keys and Permissions

Summary: April 2026 saw $621 million in decentralized finance hacks, the sector's worst month since March 2022, with 66% of the damage traced to compromised access controls rather than smart-contract flaws, according to Binance Research. DL News counted 29 incidents, 24 of them ordinary code bugs that produced about $42 million combined, while the Drift Protocol breach involved roughly nine days of setup with pre-signed transactions and multisig approvals before more than fifteen asset types were drained in about ten seconds.
Key Takeaway: Roughly $232 million in USDC moved from Solana to Ethereum over about six hours after the Drift breach without being frozen, and Circle's chief executive has said the company blocks funds only pursuant to court orders or law enforcement requests - so your recovery window may be set by decisions nobody at your protocol makes.

Read the original at The Hacker News ↗