Costly Reality in 2023: Top 10 Cryptocurrency Hacks Lost Over $1 Billion

Brief:

-The top 10 cryptocurrency hacks caused over $1 billion in losses in 2023, with entities associated with Tron founder Sun Yuchen losing $243 million.

-Mixin, a decentralized digital asset management organization, suffered significant losses of $200 million due to a 2023 cloud breach.

-The Solana network retained more than 50 percent of its developers by 2023, but its growth attracted advanced attacks that mimicked Solana wallet responses.Litecoin Miner

Blockchain security firm SlowMist estimates that the total losses from the 10 largest cryptocurrency hacks in 2023 total more than $1 billion. Despite security firms rushing to address new threats on Solana, hacks involving entities related to Tron founder Justin Sun still resulted in more than 20 percent of the money lost.

The Heco chain vulnerability and the Poloniex breach caused approximately $243 million in losses. The most costly hack was the hack of Mixin, a decentralized digital asset management organization.

Cryptocurrency Hack May Have Been Caused by “Duct Tape” Code

Mixin suffered a cloud breach in which the second largest hacker stole $197 million from Euler Finance, a decentralized financial lending protocol. This resulted in approximately $200 million in losses to customers. The organization arranged to pay 50 percent of the losses.

The third largest loss of $130 million was suffered by the Poloniex exchange, a cryptocurrency exchange acquired by controversial cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sun Yuchen. a 2022 report by The Verge claimed that Poloniex’s software contained “duct tape” code. The Verge 2022 report claimed Poloniex’s software contained “duct tape” code.

Top 10 Cryptocurrency Security Incidents | Source: Slow Fog

In February 2023, AllianceBlock’s BonqDAO lending protocol was hacked. Attackers were able to steal the organization’s ALBT native tokens through a smart contract error. Although AllianceBlock founder and CTO Matthijs de Vries disputed media reports, they allegedly defrauded the organization of $120 million.Jasminer

HTX (formerly Firecoin.com) and its eco-centric Heco blockchain were hacked in November to the tune of $113 million. Sun, who has not disclosed any official exchange role other than that of “advisor,” is suspected of injecting liquidity into HTX, a Tether (USDT)-based pledge product launched last year.

In June 2023, users of the Atomic wallet suffered a data breach affecting less than 1% of users.Orbit Chain, a cross-chain protocol that connects multiple networks, was later attacked, resulting in a loss of approximately $82 billion to users. However, the hack that will probably have the biggest impact on decentralized finance in 2023 is the $74 million breach of stablecoin giant Curve Finance.

Cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx suffered a cyberattack that saw multiple blockchains lose $70 million. in July, users of wallet service Alphapho lost $60 million in funds that were believed to have been transferred across the chain. The attack may have been perpetrated by the North Korean Lazarus Group.

Solana Hacking a Cause for Alertness as It Grows

The Solana Developer Report recently revealed that the network retains more than 50 percent of its developers by 2023. The report implied that ethereum developers must undergo rigorous retraining to work on Solana.

However, the Solana network’s recent growth has attracted sophisticated scams. Recently, hackers attempted to trick Solana users into signing transactions by mimicking the response of a genuine Solana wallet. In response, BlockAid, a Web3 fraud protection company, is encouraging developers to work with them to help users stay safe.

Hacker mimics Solana wallet | Credit: BlockAid

Recently, YouTube took down Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko’s Deepfake and offered a freebie. The video capitalized on the recent boom in artificial intelligence to trick users. The ad also appeared on X.

Austin Federa, a representative of the Solana Foundation, said such scams are proliferating. The video features Yakovenko’s monotone voice, which could give investors clues.

“There has been a significant increase in deep fakes and other AI-generated content recently.”

However, these scams remain challenging, but they utilize the same tactics used by other Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) schemes. It’s also worth checking official social media accounts for signs of similar messages.