CertiK reveals $100 million stolen in April crypto attack

Crypto attacks in April exceeded $100 million, adding to the already significant sum stolen in 2023. Unsurprisingly, DeFi was the main target last month.

CertiK reports that crypto attacks in April topped $100 million. The blockchain security company noted that around $103.6 million was stolen due to exploits, hacks and fraud.

Crypto attacks are not slowed down

Flash loans were one of the most common attack methods, resulting in $19.9 million being stolen. These attacks are common and continue to serve as a pain point for the DeFi space. Exit scams drained victims of $9.4 million, a smaller but still significant sum of money. However, exploits resulted in the most losses, with $74.5 million stolen this way.

The largest single attack was MEV Bots, which suffered $25.3 million in losses due to an exploit. Bitrue and GDAC followed with $22 million and $13 million, also due to exploits.

In terms of exit fraud, Merlin DEX was the biggest culprit, raising $2.7 million in funds. Ordinals Finance came in second with $1 million stolen.

The biggest flash loan attacks took place at Yearn Finance, with $10.1 million stolen, and Hundred Finance, which saw $7.4 million stolen.

These attacks indicate that the DeFi market still has a lot of work to do to protect investors. 2023 looks set to match 2022 in losses, something teams will be desperate to avoid as the market grows larger.

Euler Finance Hack and others have investors wary

Several major attacks have already happened in 2023, with tens of millions of dollars stolen every month. While blanket pulling still occurs, many attacks that have occurred in 2023 are due to exploitation of protocol logic.

Euler Finance was one of the most notable attacks, with hackers stealing $197 million in March. The team was able to recover the funds after negotiating with the attackers. Another major attack was Sentiment Finance, with the platform losing close to $1 million due to a re-entry attack. Here, too, the team negotiated with the hacker, with the latter returning 90% of the funds.

2023’s downward trend for crypto attacks

So far, 2023 may seem like a better year than 2022 because the year has seen less theft than before. In February 2022, hackers stole $359 million. This year, during the same month, the figure was 20 million dollars.

However, that’s only because hackers carried out large-scale attacks on a single platform, which greatly increased the total number stolen. DeFi hacks in 2022 were daring even by the crypto market’s standards, prompting the FBI to issue security tips.