Though cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and ETH, have been continuously crashing this year, digital currencies remain a valuable asset for hackers. Interestingly, October 2022 has become the biggest month for hacking activities, witnessing an astonishing $718 million stolen from Defi protocols across 11 incidents.
Investors have lost over $3 billion across 125 hacks in 2022 so far, surpassing 2021 as the biggest year for hacking events, according to a report by Chainalysis. The first four big hacks took place earlier this month, followed by 11 hacks in the next 11 days, leading to a loss of $718 million from decentralized finance projects.
Hackers steal $3 billion worth of crypto in 2022
1/ After four hacks yesterday, October is now the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity, with more than half the month still to go. So far this month, $718 million has been stolen from #DeFi protocols across 11 different hacks. pic.twitter.com/emz36f6gpK
— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) October 12, 2022
One of the biggest hacks in 2022 was the Binance Bridge event, where the threat actors stole cryptocurrencies worth $586 million, followed by the QANX bridge, leading to cash out of $1.16 million. The $2.3 million hack of Temple DAO, and the $117 million Mango Markets hack on Oct. 11, are just some of the big names that lost funds due to hackers, increasing the overall worth of stolen funds in 2022.
Cross-chain bridges continue to be a primary target of hackers, despite the continued rhetoric from blockchain proponents about how secure a consistent and immutable chain of data is.
According to Chainalysis, three bridges were compromised last month, resulting in roughly $600 million worth of cryptocurrency theft. For the uninitiated, crypto bridges are used to transfer cryptocurrency between two separate blockchains.
However, the American blockchain analysis firm observed that the number of hacking incidents decreased somewhat throughout the summer and appeared to stagnate in August, along with the ongoing crypto market issues. The most widely used coins in the world, including bitcoin and ether, are yet to regain their worth lost during the crypto crisis in May.
While calculating the crypto hacks in 2022, hackers have stolen more than $3 billion from over 125 attacks. Researchers estimate that by the end of this year, the hackers will likely surpass the previous record of $3.25 billion in losses in 2021.
According to an analysis report, 2022 will probably rank as the year with the most hacking events happening, solely focusing on the amount of money stolen in cryptocurrencies and NFT initiatives.
Every day, there seems to be a new hack demonstrating how you can never really predict which project will be the next to have its users’ cryptocurrency stolen. This is because there are always more crypto hype men pushing new decentralized autonomous organizations (AKA DAOs) or the following big “hot wallet” application that allows users to use apps to manage cryptocurrency.
The big players who lost money in 2022
Here is a list of all the big crypto hacking incidents in 2022, starting with the most significant loss of the year — a $586 million crypto hack of Binance Bridge, followed by other hacks with multiple bridges.
- Binance Bridge loses $586 million
- Wormhole Bridge loses $320 million
- Nomad Bridge loses $190 million
- Beanstalk Farms loses $182 million
- Wintermute loses $160 million
- Elrond loses $113 million
- Horizon Bridge loses $100 million
- Mango Markets loses $100 million
- Qubit Finance loses $80 million
