Hackers loot $ 1.97 billion in crypto in the first half
According to analyzed data from the Atlas VPN Team recently released, cryptocurrencies have escaped with $ 1.97 billion from around 175 hacking of crypto projects in the first half of 2022.
The data represent an increase in criminal activity in the crypto space despite the difficult situation flagship assets bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have experienced since the beginning of the year.
Crypto-project-related cybercrime doubled in the first half of 2022 when the number of these incidents increased by 90 in the first half of 2021 to 175 in the first half of 2022. Q1 of 2021 with 38 incidents.
Correspondingly, the second quarter of 2022 had 96 incidents of cybercrime, an increase of 85 percent compared with 52 in the second quarter of 2021.
Furthermore, the incidence of cybercrime increased by 22 percent from the first quarter of 2022 to the second quarter of the year, with May as the worst month of crypto attacks when it registered 37 incidents.
However, the leading victims of these attacks are the Ethereum ecosystem, which lost over $ 1 billion in 32 hacking attacks, according to data revealed by SlowMist Hacked.
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In particular, the most damaging incident was the attack on Ronin in March, an Ethereum side chain designed for the popular play-to-earn blockchain game Axie infinity (AXS), in which cybercriminals took over $ 600 million in ETH and USD coins.
Information from the report also revealed that the Solana ecosystem suffered a loss of $ 384 million in five fraudulent incidents, and states that the largest of the attacks was the exploitation of the DeFi platform Wormhole, where cryptocurrencies did away with $ 326 million.
Binance Smart Chain (BSC) was not excluded as the ecosystem faced a total of 47 attacks in H1 of 2022 and it was tapped for 141.4 million dollars, the highest among all networks.
In January in particular, Qubit Finance suffered an exploitation in which Binance coins (BNB) worth $ 80 million were tapped from Qubit’s QBridge protocol, the report states.
In addition, non-fungible token projects (NFTs) were also not safe for cybercriminals, costing $ 85 million in losses in 45 incidents, but crypto exchanges were robbed of $ 36 million in four cyber attacks, while crypto wallets lost $ 263,382 in two incidents. .
Until the security challenges are sorted out, the irreversible and decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies will continue to make cryptocurrencies one of the main targets of cybercriminals, the report noted.