Roundup of crypto hacks, exploits and heists in 2020
2020 has been the year of DeFi, but not all has gone smoothly with the fledgling financial ecosystem. Unlike in previous years, crypto news in 2020 has not been dominated by major exchange hacks and million dollar Bitcoin thefts. However, there have still been quite a few and most of them have originated from the nascent decentralized finance sector.DeFi has been one of the main drivers of crypto market momentum in 2020 and it stands to reason that the emerging financial landscape has been a magnet for scammers and hackers. Largely unaudited smart contracts coupled with cloned code have....
Related News
What is certain is that exploits only get points for being less disastrous than their counterpart. There has been a lot of talk about the recent “hacks” in the decentralized finance realm, particularly in the cases of Harvest FInance and Pickle Finance. That talk is more than necessary, considering hackers stole more than $100 million from DeFi projects in 2020, accounting for 50% of all hacks this year, according to a CipherTrace report.Related: Roundup of crypto hacks, exploits and heists in 2020Some point out that the occurrences were merely exploits that shined a light on the....
Over the years, crypto hacks have become more elaborate and common. In 2024, the community has seen hundreds of millions swept away from exploits and scams, leaving investors empty-handed. Sometimes, the exploiters return the funds and point out a project’s vulnerabilities, helping prevent future incidents. However, it’s more common to see hackers take the stolen […]
Studying the question of how Bitcoin hacking incidents affect the uncertainty in the overall crypto market. In the 2013–2017 period, 29 hacks occurred in the Bitcoin market where a total of 1.1 million Bitcoin were stolen. Noting that the average price for Bitcoin (BTC) in December 2020 exceeded $20,000, the corresponding monetary equivalent of losses is more than $22 billion, which strongly highlights the societal impact of this criminal activity. What did crypto exchanges do to address this problem? Nowadays, about 90% of exchanges use some kind of cold storage system, which means that....
An analysis of several dozen hacks identifies the main vectors and typical vulnerabilities in the decentralized finance sector. The decentralized finance sector is growing at a breakneck pace. Three years ago, the total value locked in DeFi was a mere $800 million. By February 2021, the figure had grown to $40 billion; in April 2021, it attained a milestone of $80 billion; and now it stands at above $140 billion. Such rapid growth in a new market could not but attract the attention of all manner of hackers and fraudsters.According to a report by crypto research company, since 2019, the....
While 2021 was the biggest year on record for crypto hacks, 2022 could “likely” beat the record “at this rate” according to Chainalysis. Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has labeled October 2022 as “the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity” with the total hacked value for the month nearly reaching $718 million.Despite not being more than halfway through the month, Chainalysis said 11 different hacks on decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols had seen hundreds of millions exploited.Four exploits alone took place on Oct. 11 worth around $122 million. Hackers....