The largest cryptocurrency attacks and hacks in 2023

Hacks and exploits continue to plague the cryptocurrency industry in 2023, with cryptocurrency criminals taking advantage of weak security to cause billions of dollars in losses.

Good news? According to analysts, this year wasn’t as bad as last year, which was the worst on record.

Blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs said The December report said that while “a few large-scale hacks in December could close the gap,” 2023 is likely to end with “a much lower total number of hacks than 2022,” with a massive $4 billion stolen during the period.

Nonetheless, there have been massive losses this year, with TRM Labs’ figure reaching $1.7 billion.

Let’s take a look at some of the biggest hacks of the year. (The figures in this document represent the value of funds at the time of the incident.)

Mixin: $200 million

hacker hit Mixin, a Hong Kong-based cross-chain asset transfer and decentralized exchange project, took in $200 million in cryptocurrency in September. The project’s “cloud service provider” was targeted and the project froze withdrawals. Mixin later received criticism for its design, with decentralization proponents claiming it was more centralized than the project claimed.

Euler Finance: $197 million

In March, hackers targeted Euler, a DeFi lender, flash loan The attack yielded $8.7 million in decentralized stablecoin DAI, $18.5 million in Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), $135.8 million in Staked Ethereum (stETH), and $33.8 million in Circle’s USD stablecoin USDC. .

Hackers later returned most of the stolen funds to users.

Poloniex: $126 million

Tron founder Justin Sun’s Poloniex cryptocurrency exchange was also targeted by hackers. away from In November, it held over $126 million in cryptocurrencies. Criminals robbed Ethereum, Tron, stablecoins USDT and TUSD, as well as significant amounts of meme coins.

exchange later presentation It said it had frozen some of the assets associated with the hackers’ addresses and that Poloniex’s operating profits would cover the losses.

Atomic Wallet: $100 million

North Korean hackers hit In June, the self-managed, decentralized Atomic Wallet took in its first $35 million in digital tokens. the number at that time grew up Funds continued to drain from wallets, nearly tripling, but no explanation was provided to customers.

Blockchain company Elliptic later said it had worked with several investigators and exchanges around the world to track down and freeze the stolen funds, whose addresses were frozen.

Curve: $60 million

hacker targeted July decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol curve. The decentralized exchange running on Ethereum was one of many protocols that forked its code, which led hackers to discover vulnerabilities in Vyper, the programming language it later used.

But Curve offered rewards to attackers. Searched successfully 73% recovery by August 7th.

Kyber: $48 million

Hackers attacked DeFi market maker KyberSwap in November, stealing nearly $50 million worth of cryptocurrency. Then things got strange. The attackers wrote a public on-chain letter requesting complete control of the protocol and the company behind it, as well as the removal of Kyber’s leadership.

Equity: $40 million

In September, hackers hit Stake, a gambling site that rapper Drake hacked and made $40 million. Cryptocurrency funds were withdrawn from wallets belonging to the gambling platform, but the company insisted customer funds were safe.

According to experts, criminals stole $16 million from Ethereum, Tether, USD Coin, and DAI, and another $25 million from Binance Smart Chain and Polygon. The FBI later said It is said that the Lazarus Group, a hacker organization linked to North Korea, is behind the attack.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.