Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
During the second quarter of this year, more than $572 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen due to hacks and scams, with two significant incidents accounting for the majority of the stolen funds, as per a recent report by immunefi, a bug bounty platform.
The report revealed that crypto losses in Q2, 2024, exceeded $572 million, with over $564 million attributed to 53 hacking incidents and the remaining $8.45 million to 19 fraud incidents. Hacking accounted for 98.5 percent of the losses, while fraud only made up 1.5 percent. Notably, two major hacking incidents during that quarter resulted in $360 million (62.8 percent) of the total losses.
The first incident occurred on May 31 when Japanese cryptocurrency platform DMM Bitcoin fell victim to a hacking attack, leading to a loss of approximately $305 million. The second incident took place on June 23, targeting Turkish crypto exchange BtcTurk, resulting in the theft of $55 million worth of funds.
The total identified crypto losses in Q2, 2024, surpassed $920 million, marking a 24 percent increase compared to the same period in the previous year.
The primary targets of these exploits were centralized finance (CeFi) entities, where all crypto trades are facilitated through a central exchange. This is in contrast to decentralized finance (DeFi) where trades do not involve an exchange.
Of the total losses, 70 percent were attributed to CeFi, with DeFi accounting for the remaining 30 percent.
Immunefi CEO Mitchell Amador emphasized, “This quarter highlights how infrastructure compromises can be the most devastating hacks in crypto, as a single compromise can lead to millions in damages. This was evident during this quarter, where losses surged primarily due to hacks targeting CeFi infrastructure, surpassing DeFi, despite a smaller number of hacks in that sector. Robust measures to safeguard the entirety of the ecosystem are crucial.”
According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), payments made via cryptocurrencies are typically irreversible, making it challenging to recover hacked cryptos.
Data from Immunefi indicated that only $26.7 million was recovered from four incidents in Q2, representing just 5 percent of total losses. Although this recovery rate was a slight improvement over the 3.9 percent recovered in Q2, 2023.
A poll conducted by Pew Research in April 2023 revealed that 17 percent of U.S. adults have invested in, traded, or used cryptocurrency.
Crypto Hackers
Over the past year, the U.S. Department of Justice has arrested several individuals in connection with crypto hacking incidents.
In May, two brothers were arrested for allegedly stealing $25 million worth of cryptocurrency. The duo executed a technologically sophisticated scheme to manipulate the processes used to validate transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing them to access pending transactions and steal people’s cryptocurrency.
In another case, former security engineer Shakeeb Ahmed was sentenced to three years in prison for hacking two decentralized crypto exchanges and stealing over $12 million in cryptocurrency.
Meanwhile, crypto fraud continues to impact ordinary citizens, with Americans reporting losses exceeding $10 billion to fraud last year. The FTC is actively taking action against such scams to protect consumers.
According to a report by the Institute for Marketplace Trust in 2023, investment/cryptocurrency scams ranked as the “riskiest scams” with over 80 percent of victims experiencing monetary losses.
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