Crypto hackers raked in over $413 million in Q3 2024. Immunefi said DeFi remains a “fertile ground” for black hat hackers.
Crypto industry lost $413 million in Q3/2024, down 40% year-on-year
According to a report by bug bounty platform Immunefi , the cryptocurrency industry lost $413 million in cryptocurrency due to hacks and scams in the third quarter of this year. This is down 28% from the previous quarter ($573 million) and down 40% from the same period last year ($686 million).
Source: Immunefi
Immunefi highlights the large amount of money locked in DeFi protocols as a lucrative target for hackers, with the current TVL reaching nearly $90 billion, according to data from defillama .
TVL of DeFi protocols. Source: defillama (September 27, 2024)
Hacks/attacks dominated Q3, accounting for 99.3% ($409.9 million) of total losses from 31 incidents. Meanwhile, fraud, phishing, and Rug Pull accounted for just 0.7% ($3.1 million) from 3 incidents.
July saw the highest loss of the quarter at $282 million. August saw a sharp drop to just $15 million. However, September saw losses increase to $116 million.
Crypto industry damage statistics by month. Source: Immunefi
The Ethereum blockchain was a popular target for hackers, with 15 reported thefts, compared to just eight on BNB Chain and two on Base. Overall, there were only two cases of stolen assets being recovered: the MEV attack on Ronin Network, which recovered $10 million from a $12 million hack, and ShezmuTech, which reversed the entire $4.9 million loss.
Crypto industry damage statistics by chain. Source: Immunefi
Most of the victims in Q3/2024 were cryptocurrency exchanges, with India’s WazirX losing $235 million and Singapore’s BingX losing $52 million . The remaining 32 hacks accounted for 32% of the total loss.
Top 10 worst crypto hacks in Q3/2024. Source: Immunefi
Mitchell Amador, founder and CEO of Immunefi, Chia :
“We are seeing an increasing number of incidents targeting DeFi, while CeFi has fewer incidents but often has more severe consequences, with hundreds of millions of dollars stolen in a single attack.”
He also emphasized that the biggest infrastructure issue for CeFi is private key management , which is crucial to maintaining custody of crypto assets. However, this is often not covered by security audits, and requires very stringent key management policies, practices, and contingency plans.
WazirX is one of the unfortunate cases that lost money after hackers compromised the exchange’s private keys. The platform had to suspend withdrawals and freeze transactions since July 18, and is seeking protection from the Singapore court to have time to restructure.
To date, Immunefi has awarded over $100 million in bounties. These payouts spanned three years and were made from over 3,000 bug reports, the largest being $10 million for a vulnerability discovered in the cross-chain protocol Wormhole .
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