The year 2022 is turning out to be a good harvest for hackers in the crypto world. The spirits are down with Bitcoin staying below the $20K mark, and the Ethereum Merge failing to have an impact on adoption. Chainalysis has reported 125 hacks till date this year, and says this rate will make 2022 the worst year of losses due to looting and theft on cryptocurrency platforms.
Total amount stolen so far: Over $3 billion
Popular services targeted: Cross-chain bridges, DeFi (decentralized finance)
The most recent crypto hacks are those of Binance, Mango Wntermute and Axie Infinity’s video gaming platform, Ronin. At Mango, hackers did something creative – the manipulated the price of the token and took away a hundred million dollars.
The notable hacks this year, as per a Bloomberg report, are as follows (all figures in Million dollars):
- Wormhole (325M)
- Nomad Bridge (190M)
- Wintermute (162M)
- Binance Bridge (100M)
- Harmony Bridge (100M)
- Mango Markets (100M)
- Qubit Finance (80M)
- Beanstalk (77M)
- Fei Rari (77M)
Cross-chain bridges are attracting hackers in plenty this year, and in October alone 3 hacks involved the bridges. Over 60% of losses this year involved cross-bridge blockchain exploits. DeFi platforms – that attract users for offering swap, liquidity and other finance services – are also a special target and form the majority. As per Chainalysis, central exchanges used to be the main target in 2019. As can be seen, the targets are usually services that are gaining traction and publicity.
As per Chainalysis, October is turning out to be the biggest, recording 11 hacks of DeFi platforms and a total of $718 million. From the Binance hack, about hundred million are lost beyond recovery, out of the total $570 million.
Share & like1/ After four hacks yesterday, October is now the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity, with more than half the month still to go. So far this month, $718 million has been stolen from #DeFi protocols across 11 different hacks. pic.twitter.com/emz36f6gpK
— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) October 12, 2022
