290 Hacks Have Robbed the Crypto Industry of $13 Billion, Says Research
As the crypto market grows, black hat hackers lurking in the shadows are resurfacing.
Key Takeaways
- Ethereum dApps have been exploited for $142 million and ERC-20 tokens have been drained of $1.15 billion.
- EOS leads the pack in the number hacks on a single smart contract platform.
- Basic security measures help significantly reduce the risk of losing funds to a hack.
Share this article
Crypto hackers have looted the industry of more than $13 billion in 290 different hacks, according to blockchain security firm Slowmist. As the market enters bullish territory and the size of the reward for malicious actors expands, new users and investors must take precautions in storing their funds.
Crypto Hacks Highlight Need for Precautions
Cryptocurrency exploits seemingly happen weekly, whether that’s an exchange, a blockchain, or a complimentary service like a crypto wallet.
In August alone, DeFi options provider Opyn was exploited, YAM v1 failed because of a rebase bug, and Ethereum Classic had two double-spend attacks.
Ethereum-based protocols have suffered over $142 million worth of hacks, and ERC-20 exploits have resulted in $1.15 billion in damage. The single most profitable category for malicious actors to exploit is centralized exchanges, which have given up $4.6 billion to hackers. Jason Lau, CISO of Crypto.com, told Crypto Briefing:
“Unfortunately, like the mainstream/traditional finance industry, crypto is not immune to hacking. Bad actors and hackers follow the money, and the recent strong performance of crypto markets has made exchanges especially attractive targets.”
But when it comes to the total number of hacks, EOS dApps leads the way with 115 hacks since going live two years ago. Ethereum and TRON dApps have been hacked 21 and 20 times, respectively.
Still, each hack helps the industry implement stronger long-term security measures. Lau explained that this has always been a high priority for Crypto.com. He said:
“We have one of the largest insurance policies in the crypto market, $360M to secure our cold storage assets on our custodial partner Ledger Vault, and we were the first crypto company in the world to have a number of key certifications, including ISO/IEC 27001:2013, ISO/IEC 27701:2019, PCI:DSS 3.2.1 and Level 1 compliance.”
Properly securing cryptocurrency is a highly stressed pre-requisite of investing in this industry. Yet, even experienced users find their security practices to be insufficient.
There are a few basic practices that allow investors and users to significantly reduce the risk of getting caught in one of these incidents.
The most important of which is self custody of funds on a hardware wallet with copies of the seed phrase stored in multiple offline locations. Minimizing reliance on centralized exchanges and wallets that are connected to the internet goes a long way in securing one’s funds.
Share this article
