October: Over $718 million lost in crypto-currency hacks

We haven’t even finished the first half of October yet, and this month is already proving to be the biggest month for crypto-currency hacks in the entire year of 2022. So far this month, over $718 million has been lost in crypto-currency hacks. The total value hacked in October has already surpassed the numbers from March 2022.

Note that all of this stolen money came from several different DeFi protocols. Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis reports that:

After four hacks yesterday, October is now the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity, with more than half the month still to go. So far this month, $718 million has been stolen from #DeFi protocols across 11 different hacks.

Chainalysis adds that at this rate, 2022 will easily surpass 2021 as the biggest year for crypto-currency hacks ever. So far in 2022, hackers have managed to steal more than $3 billion across 125 hacks that have taken place this year.

DeFi protocols most vulnerable to crypto-currency hacks

The crypto-currency market has been facing the problem of hacks for a long time now. However, the nature of these hacks has changed. In 2019, centralized exchanges were the most vulnerable to hacks. However, over the past year, decentralized finance (DeFi) exchanges have been the biggest victims of crypto hacks. As explained by Chainalysis :

Cross-chain bridges remain a major target for hackers, with 3 bridges breached this month and nearly $600 million stolen, accounting for 82% of losses this month and 64% of losses for the entire year.

This month, there were two major hacks of over $100 million in cross-bridge attacks. Hackers recently stole over $100 million in BNB Coins through a cross-bridge linking BNB Beacon Chain (BEP2) and BNB Chain (BEP20 or BSC).

Similarly, Solana-based DeFi protocol Mango Markets lost over $100 million in the latest exploit earlier this week. DeFi protocols need to up their game as hackers become adept at exploiting weaknesses in the security, coding and structure of DeFi marketplaces.