Chainanalysis has set the year 2022 as the ‘biggest year ever for hacking activity’. Here is a 10 Crypto Hacks That Took Place in 2022 and the Theft of $2,1B.
Crypto Hacks Year
The year 2022 has been left behind as a very difficult and turbulent year for the crypto industry. While the market witnessed huge declines over the past year, the giants of the crypto sector collapsed and billions were stolen through hacks.
Below are the 10 biggest exploits and attacks that took place in 2022, from smallest to largest.
10. Beanstalk Farms Exploit – $79.3M
Beanstalk Farms, the stablecoin protocol, seized $76 million by exploiting the vulnerability on April 18, when an attacker used a flash loan to purchase governance tokens.
9. Qubit Finance Bridge Exploit – $80M
Qubit Finance, a DeFi protocol on the BNB Smart Chain, had over $80 million of BNB. These BNBs were stolen in a bridge exploit on January 28th.
The attacker deceived the protocol’s smart contract by making them believe that they had deposited collateral that allowed them to mint an asset that represented bridged Ether. By repeating this process many times, they depleted the funds of the protocol by borrowing multiple cryptocurrencies against the unsupported bridged ETH.
8. Rare Fuse Exploit – $79.3M
Another DeFi protocol called Rari Capital was exploited on April 30 in the amount of roughly $79.3 million.
The attacker took advantage of a reentrancy vulnerability in the protocol’s Rar Fuse liquidity pool smart contracts, providing a call a function to malicious contract to empty all crypto pools.
7. Harmony Bridge Crypto Hack – $100M
Horizon Bridge Harmony‘s Layer 1 blockchain, which connects Ethereum, Bitcoin BNB Chain, has nearly $100 million dumped in multiple cryptocurrencies.
6. BNB Chain Bridge Exploit – $100M
The BNB Chain was suspended on October 6 due to the ‘irregular activity’ caused by an exploit that caused about $100 million to be drained from the BSC Token Hub, which is the cross chain bridge.
Initially, it was thought that the attacker was able to get $ 600 million due to the vulnerability, while it was learned that the attacker had more than about $ 400 million worth of digital assets frozen on the blockchain.
5. Wintermute Crypto Hack – $160M
Wintermute, a UK-based market-maker, suffered a loss from the hot wallet, which was valued at around $160 million out of 70 tokens transferred from the wallet.
According to the analysis by blockchain cybersecurity firm CertiK, a vulnerable private key was hacked. According to CertiK, this allowed the attacker to use the private key with a function that allowed the crypto hacker to modify the platform’s swap agreement.
4. Nomad Token Bridge Exploit – $190M
On August 2, Nomad token bridge, which allows users to swap cryptocurrencies on multiple blockchains, was damaged by multiple hackers for a total of $ 190 million.
The reason for the exploit, on the other hand, was a smart contract vulnerability that could not correctly verify transaction inputs.
Copycats Crypto Hackers
Multiple users who were benevolent in the attack as opposed to malicious hackers, many crypto hackers were able to copy the actions of the original attacker to divert funds to them. Approximately 88% of the addresses participating in the exploit were identified as ‘copycats’ in the published report.
After the attack, bona fide hackers returned the funds worth approximately $32.6 million to the protocol.
3.Wormhole Bridge Exploit – $321M
The Wormhole token bridge suffered an exploit on February 2 that resulted in the loss of 120,000 Wrapped Ether (wETH) tokens worth $321 million.
Wormhole allows users to send and receive crypto across multiple blockchains. By catching a vulnerability in the protocol’s smart contract, a hacker managed to mint 120,000 wETH, which is not backed by collateral, on Solana. They were then able to trade them for ETH.
2. FTX Wallet Crpyto Hack – $477M
Immediately after the FTX bankruptcy proceedings, a series of unauthorized transactions took place on the exchange. With the statement made by Elliptic, it was claimed that a total of $477 million dollars worth of crypto money was stolen.
Sam Bankman-Fried said in a statement: “Either an ex-employee or somewhere someone installed malware on an ex-employee’s computer”
1. Ronin Bridge Hack – $612M
The Ronin Bridge Crypto Hacks, which has been recorded as the largest exploit in 2022, took place on March 23. The exploit resulted in Ronin bridge losses of approximately $612 million – 173,600 ETH and $25.5 million in Coins.
Ronin is an Ethereum sidechain that was created for Axie Infinity, a play to earn NFT game. Sky Mavis, the developers of Axie Infinity, announced that hackers gained access to private keys, compromised validator nodes, and verify transactions that withdraw funds from the bridge.
Crypto Hacks Opinion
The U.S. Treasury Department updated its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list on April 14, reflecting the possibility that the Lazarus Group was behind the bridge’s exploit.
The Ronin Bridge Hack has gone down in history as the largest cryptocurrency exploit that has taken place up to this time.
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