For a long time, the crypto industry has been considered one of the best places to store money, as it has superior security. However, hackers quickly learned how to find vulnerabilities, so every day, new reports of attacks on various crypto companies, exchanges, and wallets appear on the network.
Recent studies have shown that hackers have stolen assets valued at more than 2 billion USD over the past six months. And these are just the hacks that have become publicly known because there are companies that seek to hide such data to maintain their image.
The most notorious hacks in the last few months
Recently, various crypto companies have come under hacker attacks. Among the most affected are:
- Ethereum;
- Solana;
- BNB Chain;
- And various NFT trading platforms.
The Ethereum blockchain suffered the most from the work of hackers. According to official figures, it has lost assets of up to 1 billion USD due to 32 hacker attacks. The most significant attack was on the Ronin sidechain, during which the attackers stole assets worth 625 million USD.
It is worth noting that the Ronin sidechain is involved in the NFT game Axie Infinity, a mega-popular play-to-earn platform played by millions of users worldwide.
The Solana occupies second place in terms of the number of losses. Over the past few months, it has suffered from 5 different hacker attacks, as a result of which almost 384 million USD was lost.
In third place is the BBNB ChainNB Chain ecosystem. Hackers made the most attacks on it – 47, but at the same time, they could steal only 141 million USD. Cybercriminals withdrew digital assets estimated at 80 million USD from the Qubit Finance DeFi platform based on BNB Chain.
Also, various NFT projects suffered heavy losses. The attackers received more than 80 million dollars due to 45 attacks.
The number of hackers is growing rapidly
It is worth noting that every year, more and more people are engaged in hacker attacks. They can be roughly divided into three groups: those who want to get a profit, those who hack assets for fun, and those who create malware to resell it to novice hackers.
In the first case, people hack crypto exchanges and wallets for personal gain. It is one of the most profitable earnings in the IT industry.
Often, we see messages on the network that hackers break into crypto companies, withdraw all assets, and then return them after a while. Because such companies have previously announced, they have installed new software that improves security.
Hackers are tempted to prove that there is a counterbalance to any security solution. In this case, they are interested in sports, but they are not interested in money. As a result, having proved their capabilities, they return the money.
In addition, today, many companies specialize in developing malicious software. To prove their performance, they hack various crypto companies.
Now the number of attacks on blockchain companies is growing exponentially. For example, if we compare the number of attacks in the first quarter of 2021 and 2022, we will see that their number has doubled.
It is assumed that the number of crypto criminals will continue to grow until sustainable tools are created to identify and punish them.