Its two more weeks before the month of October ends. October has become the worst-ever month for crypto-related crimes with over $718 million in overall losses.
According to Chainalysis, the amount was stolen from several decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols across 11 different attacks.
This year “will likely surpass 2021 as the biggest year for hacking on record,” Chainalysis researchers wrote. “So far, hackers have grossed over $3 billion across 125 hacks. Despite the current bear market, we’re seeing a lot of activity among hackers, who are targeting various protocols,” said Jasper Lee, audit tech lead at crypto auditing firm Sooho.io.
Attackers gained over $3.2 billion in 2021. But 2022 was off to an even-rocky start with $325 million exploit of a popular cross-chain service Wormhole. It is followed by a $625 million attack on Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge, then a $200 million exploit of the Nomad bridge.
Attack vectors in the crypto sector range from exploiting bridges, a blockchain-based tool that allows users to transact between different networks, to market manipulation. Where rogue traders utilize millions of dollars to move thinly traded markets in their favor to net several multiples of the initial capital deployed.
This month alone, Chainalysis said, with an attack on a BNB Chain-based bridge over the weekend saw exploiters illicitly gaining over $100 million. After the bridge was exploited for $566 million. Then,on monday, the layer 1 blockchain QANplatform was the target of a bridge hack that resulted in the theft of nearly $1 million in QANX tokens.
