In August, the cryptocurrency market experienced a significant rise in losses due to hacking and phishing attacks, amidst ongoing market uncertainty.
Blockchain security firm PeckShield reported via X that the crypto ecosystem suffered losses amounting to $313.86 million across more than 10 different hacks last month. Of this amount, over $293 million was attributed to phishing attacks.
This marks an 18% increase in crypto assets lost to fraudulent activities compared to July. According to a report by crypto.news, crypto and decentralized finance companies lost $266 million to hackers in a total of 16 incidents.
#PeckShieldAlert August 2024 witnessed 10+ hacks in the crypto space, resulting in ~$313.86 million in losses. The 2 largest hacks, both involving unauthorized transfers (#Phishing), accounted for 93.5% of the total stolen funds, amounting to $293.4 million.#Top 5 Hacks in… pic.twitter.com/lIAieHdUqt
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) September 1, 2024
The largest hack involved a whale losing 4,064 Bitcoin, valued at approximately $238 million, to a phishing attack on August 19. The attacker quickly transferred the funds to various crypto platforms, including THORChain, KuCoin, and Railgun.
In a similar incident, another whale lost over $55 million in Dai stablecoin to a phishing attack. The funds were reportedly stored in Maker, the fourth-largest DeFi protocol.
On-chain data indicates that the hacker has since converted the stolen funds to Ethereum and no longer holds any assets in the address used for the attack.
Additionally, on August 6, the Ronin Network experienced a malicious transaction involving 4,000 ETH, valued at $10 million. Fortunately, the attack was not conducted by malicious actors; rather, whitehat hackers exploited a Maximum Extractable Value bug.
The whitehat hackers later returned the funds and notified Ronin Network’s developers of the bug. In response, the company hinted at offering a $500,000 bug bounty as a reward.
Other notable incidents include an unauthorized transaction worth $5.1 million and Nexera’s $1.8 million exploit, which ranked fourth and fifth among the largest hacks in August, according to PeckShield.
