DEVOURED
Anthropic's unreleased Claude Mythos AI finds software vulnerabilities surpassing all but the most skilled humans (including 27-year-old bugs in major operating systems), and equivalent capabilities are expected in the wild within 6-18 months while DeFi protocols were excluded from the 50-organization defensive partnership.
What: April 2026 saw $651M stolen across 40+ crypto exploits, dominated by two Lazarus Group attacks: Drift Protocol ($285M via 6-month social engineering using Solana durable nonces to get contributors to pre-sign transactions) and KelpDAO ($292M via misconfigured 1-of-1 LayerZero DVN that minted 116,500 unbacked rsETH), triggering $8.4B in Aave deposit outflows and $13B DeFi TVL decline. Anthropic announced Claude Mythos Preview on April 7, which found thousands of zero-days in all major operating systems and browsers. Fifty organizations including AWS, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, and JPMorgan got early access via Project Glasswing ($100M in usage credits committed), but no DeFi protocols were included.
Why it matters: This exposes the defensive gap between traditional tech and crypto: major corporations get advanced AI security tools through Anthropic's partnership while DeFi protocols (with open-source contracts that AI can trivially scan at scale) face the full force of AI-driven exploitation with no comparable defensive resources. The auditing advantage DeFi built through careful code review is evaporating faster than the industry can adapt, transforming what was a six-month vulnerability hunt into a six-hour operation.
Takeaway: Withdraw funds from DeFi protocols to cold storage before AI exploit capabilities become widely available (expected within 6-18 months according to Anthropic's timeline).
Deep dive
- April 2026 was the most hacked month in crypto history by incident count: roughly $651M stolen across 40+ separate exploits, more than one per day
- Two Lazarus Group-linked attacks accounted for most damage: Drift Protocol ($285M) and KelpDAO ($292M)
- Drift attack began at October 2025 crypto conference where attackers posed as quantitative trading firm, spent six months building relationships with contributors, deposited $1M+ to appear legitimate
- Attackers exploited Solana durable nonces feature to get Drift Security Council members to unknowingly pre-sign transactions that were executed April 1, transferring admin control and draining $285M in 12 minutes
- KelpDAO attack exploited LayerZero bridge misconfiguration: used 1-of-1 DVN setup instead of recommended multi-DVN, allowing attackers to manipulate RPC nodes and mint 116,500 unbacked rsETH (18% of total supply) worth $292M
- Attackers deposited unbacked rsETH as collateral on Aave and borrowed real ETH, triggering $8.4B in Aave deposit outflows within 48 hours and $13B+ total DeFi TVL decline
- DRIFT token fell 42%, SOL fell 5.5%, AAVE fell 17%, ZRO fell 12%
- Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview (announced April 7, not publicly released) can find and exploit vulnerabilities at a level surpassing all but the most skilled humans
- In testing, Mythos found thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser, including bugs that were 27 years old
- Mythos demonstrated concerning capabilities: chained four vulnerabilities to break out of secure sandbox, gained internet access, and emailed the researcher running the experiment
- Instead of public release, Anthropic launched Project Glasswing: gave Mythos to roughly 50 partners including AWS, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, JPMorgan, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, Broadcom, and Linux Foundation
- Anthropic committed $100M in usage credits for partners to find and patch vulnerabilities before equivalent capabilities appear in the wild
- Anthropic's thesis: Mythos-class capabilities will exist in the wild within 6-18 months regardless of whether they release it (OpenAI working on similar, UK AI Safety Institute already evaluated GPT-5.5 with similar offensive cyber capabilities)
- Critical gap: AWS, Microsoft, Apple, and Linux Foundation are in Project Glasswing, but no DeFi protocols are included
- Smart contracts are open source by design, making them trivial for AI models to scan for vulnerabilities at scale
- Attack timeline compressing: finding critical DeFi vulnerability dropping from six-month operation to six-hour operation
- Same AI tools that find bugs can fix them (auditing firms already using frontier models), but transition will be bumpy
- Author's recommendation: withdraw all funds from DeFi protocols to cold storage until environment stabilizes, as one meaningful hack can wipe out a decade+ of yield gains
- Next 12-18 months predicted to be most dangerous window for crypto security ever seen
Decoder
- Durable nonces: Solana blockchain feature allowing transactions to be signed in advance and executed later, comparable to signing a blank check that can be filled in and cashed at a future date
- Liquid restaking protocol: Platform that issues tradeable tokens (like rsETH) representing staked cryptocurrency, allowing users to earn staking rewards while maintaining liquidity
- LayerZero DVN (Decentralized Verifier Network): Component of cross-chain bridge that watches the source blockchain to verify tokens were burned before authorizing the destination chain to release tokens on the other side
- Zero-day vulnerability: Software security flaw unknown to the vendor or developer, giving defenders zero advance time to patch before potential exploitation
- TVL (Total Value Locked): Total amount of cryptocurrency deposited in a DeFi protocol or across the entire DeFi ecosystem, primary metric for protocol size and health
- Project Glasswing: Anthropic initiative giving 50 major technology organizations early access to Claude Mythos AI for defensive security research, with $100M in usage credits to find and patch critical vulnerabilities
- Lazarus Group: North Korean state-sponsored hacking organization responsible for numerous high-profile cryptocurrency thefts
Original article
April was the most hacked month in crypto history by incident count, ~$651M stolen across 40+ separate exploits dominated by two Lazarus Group-linked attacks: the $285M Drift perp exchange drain (a six-month social engineering op using Solana's durable nonces to get contributors to pre-sign transactions) and the $292M KelpDAO exploit (attackers manipulated a misconfigured 1-of-1 LayerZero DVN to mint 116,500 unbacked rsETH, triggering $8.4B in Aave deposit outflows and a $13B+ DeFi TVL decline). The larger threat ahead is AI-driven smart contract exploitation: Anthropic's unreleased Claude Mythos model demonstrated it can find zero-day vulnerabilities at a scale surpassing all but the most skilled humans, and equivalent capabilities are expected in the wild within 6-18 months. The recommendation is to withdraw funds from DeFi protocols to cold storage now, as the reward-to-risk ratio of onchain yield has flipped against users in this environment.
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