According to a security report, the industry has lost more than $1 billion to hacks and rug pulls so far this year. How to protect yourself.
Attention investors of crypto dollar: Hackers are on the attack. According to a study, cryptocurrency thefts Up to August, they were US$1.2 billion and are causing concern in the industry.
The cryptocurrency sector lost $1.21 billion worth of crypto assets due to hacks and rug pulls year-to-date (YTD) in 2024, across 154 individual exploits. This represents an increase of 15.5% compared to the same period in 2023, when losses totaled just over $1 billion, according to a report by Immunefi.
This worrying development could lead to hackers surpassing the amount stolen in 2023, according to Mitchell Amador, founder and CEO of Immunefi on Cointelegraph. The report comes just over a month after a Hacker stole more than $230 million from WazirXan Indian cryptocurrency exchange, in the second-largest cryptocurrency hack of 2024 so far.
Although hackers have already surpassed their activity from the previous year in 2024 to date, there has been a noticeable decrease in the number of hacks from month to month. Hackers stole more than $15 million worth of cryptocurrency in August, down 94% from the $274 million stolen in July. Most of this sum was lost in two major incidents, including the $9.8 million Ronin Network hack and the $1.5 million Nexera exploit. Both exploits were caused by a vulnerability during code updates.
DEFI in the spotlight
Although the decentralized finance (DeFi) represented all the “exploits” in Augustcentralized finance (CeFi) remains the biggest vulnerability to cryptocurrency security.
“The majority of losses in 2024 are attributed to attacks on CeFi infrastructure. While there were no reported or successful CeFi attacks this month, that doesn’t necessarily mean these threats aren’t occurring or won’t lead to future losses.”
DeFi cryptocurrencies decentralized finance
Crypto Dollar: How to Protect Yourself from Theft
The Most commonly used hacks to attack exchangesare the following:
- Theft of private keys: They gain access to this data and steal your cryptocurrencies directly from your wallets
- Vulnerability “Exploits”: They take advantage of errors in the code of “exchanges” or protocols to extract funds
- “Phishing”: Fake emails or messages are sent to trick users into revealing their personal data or private keys.
Both end users and developers or other members of the chain, it is recommended to use hardware wallets (physical devices that store private keys), verify the authenticity of the projects, until you click on suspicious links or enable two-factor authentication.
Source: Ambito
