The previous year had posed a lot of challenges to the crypto industry. They included liquidity issues, huge declines in top assets’ value, as well as a great number of bankruptcies. The market additionally went through several security threats with hackers stealing several billion dollars from DeFi protocols and individual consumers.
Hackers Swindled more than $3.7 Billion in Crypto Exploits during 2022
A blockchain security company named SlowMist published the report recently. The platform has offered an overall outlook of several crypto-related sectors’ security scenarios. It examined the stolen funds’ flow in up to 300 attacks that took place in the previous year. The document indicates that nearly 303 security events took place in the blockchain industry in 2022. This paved the way for the drainage of up to $3.7B.
The lost amount denotes a 61% decline from that of 2021 when $9.795B was lost. As disclosed in the report, almost 255 security events influenced diverse ecosystems taking into account non-fungible tokens (NFTs), cross-chain bridges, as well as the DeFi platforms.
Apart from that, 10 security events were dealing with crypto exchanges. In eleven incidents, public chains were attacked. Six hacks witnessed wallet exploitation while 21 attacks included other entities.
The DeFi sector lost up to $2.075B in attacks, denoting almost 55% of the cumulative losses during 2022. A $1.212B worth of funds were stolen from cross-chain bridges during the same period, as per the records. This represents a 32% ratio of the whole amount of funds exploited in 2022. The paper mentioned that fifty-six security events were reported in the world of non-fungible tokens world. This resulted in a loss of more than $65.44M.
The report specified that several of the respective events were a result of phishing attacks which were credited for up to 39% of the total amount in 22 events. After that come rug pulls which occupy up to 21% proportion lost in 12 security breaches. The other 30% amount was lost in 17 security incidents. These events resulted from several internal aspects including contract vulnerabilities, according to the report.
BNB Chain Became the Largest Victim of Crypto Hacks in the Previous Year
The report brings to the front that BNB Chain (which was formerly entitled Binance Smart Chain) turned out to be the largest victim of security breaches in the blockchain sector in 2022. The respective blockchain went through 79 exploits which ended up in the loss of above $785M of assets. The research discovered that a lot of fame was gained by blockchain mixing protocols in 2022.
These forums were utilized by the hackers as their preferred tools for laundering their illegal proceeds. As the report puts it, 1,233,129 ETH (almost $2.83B) was extracted from Tornado Cash (the crypto mixer that has now been prohibited). In addition to this, 40,065 BTC tokens were sent to another crypto mixer called ChipMixer during the same year. The report by SlowMist moved on to disclose some other insights into the crypto industry.
It revealed that a few projects in the market have begun employing several operational measures to prevent money laundering in the blockchain sector. Stablecoin issuing companies Circle and Tether blocked up to 376 addresses during the previous year to stop the movement of funds from wallets by the exploiters. In the meantime, the cumulative swindled crypto exceeded the $3.7B mark in 2022.
