Cryptohackers plunder $ 2 billion in the first half of 2022 while cybercriminals thrive
Although the cryptocurrency market and the flagship Bitcoin (BTC) have struggled in the first half of 2022, a study has shown that this period has also seen a large increase in criminal activity in space.
Since January 1, 2022, cybercriminals have managed to get away with $ 1.97 billion from 175 hacking of crypto projects, according to data analyzed by the Atlas VPN team in a press release shared with Finbold on July 5.
The predominant victim of these attacks was the Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem, which lost over $ 1 billion in 32 hacking attacks. In particular, the most damaging incident was the attack on Ronin, an Ethereum side chain designed for the popular play-to-earn blockchain game Axie Infinity (AXS), in which cybercriminals took more than $ 600 million in ETH and USD Coin (USDC).
Other projects affected by hacks
The analysis is based on figures given by SlowMist hackedThe analysis platform, which collects detailed information on revealed cyber attacks on blockchain projects, found that second place belongs to the Solana (SOL) blockchain.
Solana suffered a loss of $ 383.9 million in just five incidents, the largest of which occurred through the use of the decentralized financial platform (DeFi) Wormhole.
In third place is Binance Smart Chain (BSC), whose participants were tapped for $ 141.4 million in 47 attacks in the first half of 2022, which is the highest number of such incidents among all crypto projects.
At the same time, non-fungible token (NFT) projects were also not secure from cybercriminals, costing the site $ 84.6 million in losses in 45 incidents. Crypto exchanges stole $ 35.8 million in four cyber attacks, while crypto wallets lost $ 263,382 in two incidents.
In fact, the cryptocurrency project-related cybercrime has almost doubled in the first half of 2022, as the number of these incidents rose from 90 in the first half of 2021 to 175 in the same period in 2022, or by 94%.
The first quarter of 2022 had 79 hacking incidents, which is 108% more than in the same period in 2021 which registered 38 incidents. Meanwhile, the second quarter of 2022 registered 96 attacks, which is an 85% growth compared to 52 in the second quarter of 2022.
Finally, the report said that the incidence of cybercrime attacks increased by 22% or over a fifth from the first quarter of 2022 to the second quarter of the year, with May being the worst month for crypto projects in this sense, when it recorded 37 incidents.
Meanwhile, in late June, Finbold reported that North Korea was a leader among all countries in terms of cryptocurrency crime in 2022, as they saw a series of 15 successful cyberattacks. The United States is close behind, with 14 confirmed cases of traceable cryptocurrency.
