North Korea-linked theft and poor key security dominate Web3 losses: Hacken

Hacken says Web3 losses climbed to nearly $4 billion in 2025, with North Korea behind over half the damage, and regulators are under pressure to turn security guidance into hard rules.

The Hacken 2025 Yearly Security Report puts total Web3 losses at about $3.95 billion, up roughly $1.1 billion from 2024, with just over half of that attributed to North Korean threat actors.

A report shared with Cointelegraph shows losses peaked at more than $2 billion in the first quarter of the year before falling to around $350 million by Q4, but Hacken warns that the pattern still points to systemic operational risk rather than isolated coding bugs.

The report frames 2025 as a year where the numbers worsened, but the underlying story became clear. Smart contract bugs matter, but the biggest, least recoverable losses are still coming from weak keys, compromised signers, and sloppy off‑boarding.

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