October will be the worst month for crypto-related crime
According to the crypto research firm, following four major hacks on Tuesday, October has seen $718 million stolen from decentralized finance projects across 11 hacks in just 11 days. One of those attacks was the QANX bridge, which on Tuesday revealed it had been infiltrated, allowing hackers to withdraw $1.16 million.
The October attacks include the $586 million Binance Bridge heist, the $2.3 million Temple DAO hack, and the $117 million Mango Markets hack, to name a few. According to a post mortem by crypto security firm CertiK, the latest attack used two different addresses to influence the price of Mango’s native currency, $MNGO, and then borrow against their own crypto as collateral. The hacker, in this case, then went online to Mango’s forums and offered to return the crypto in exchange for $70 million USD stablecoin from Mango’s treasury.
And while blockchain proponents continue to tout the security of a continuous and immutable chain of data, cross-chain bridges remain a prime target for hackers. Bridges are used to transfer cryptocurrency between two separate blockchains, and according to Chainalysis, three bridges were hacked this month, totaling over $600 million in cryptocurrency.
The frequency of attacks had actually decreased throughout the summer months, and Chainalysis stated in August that hacks appeared to be stopping with continued challenges to the crypto market. Since the crypto crash in May, the world’s most popular currencies, such as bitcoin and ether, have failed to regain the wealth lost during the 2021 bubble. Those keeping an eye on bitcoin prices have observed some significant falls as we enter this week, in anticipation of a US employment report on Friday and the latest inflation reports.
According to Chainalysis, 2022 is on track to be the best year for hacks in terms of total money raised from a wide range of crypto and NFT businesses. So far this year, hackers have made more than $3 billion from 125 attacks. This puts hackers on track to break the record set in 2021 of approximately $3.25 billion stolen in cyberattacks by the end of this year.
It’s also worth noting where most of these hacks originated this year. In previous years, such as 2019 and 2020, most of the hacks targeted crypto exchanges, mainly through gaining access to user accounts via phishing or hacking into the exchange’s internal network. In 2021, hackers mostly targeted DeFi initiatives, an umbrella term for public crypto projects designed to eliminate middlemen and act as a currency exchange and payment mechanism independent of banks or governments. Things have gotten so dire for these DeFi companies that the FBI has issued a warning to ordinary people considering investing their hard-earned cryptocurrency.
And as more crypto hypemen promote new decentralized autonomous organizations (AKA DAOs) or the next big “hot wallet” application that allows users to use apps to manage crypto, there seems to be a new hack every day, showing how you never know which project will be the next to have its users’ crypto stolen.
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