Hack Me If You Can – Sadly, not a year goes by in the cryptosphere without some spectacular hacks. Whether it’s the good old crypto-exchange hacks or the most recent DeFi loopholes, the year 2020 has been rather a bad year as we will see.
At least 122 attacks listed in 1 year
Virtual private network provider AtlasVPN recently released a report that takes stock of cyber attacks the cryptosphere has suffered over the past year, and it’s not a pretty sight.
In total, $ 3.78 billion in crypto-assets were stolen in 2020, during 122 different attacks . Caution, however, this estimate was evaluated with the listing of crypto at the date of this January 12 (it therefore takes into account the recent pump of Bitcoin Hero).
The only “good news” is that for the first time in 5 years , the number of attacks has reportedly decreased compared to the previous year. In particular, we had gone from 84 cyberattacks in 2018, to 133 in 2013.
Crypto-exchanges are not the biggest heists
In detail, we can see that the hacks of crypto exchange platforms only represent just over $ 300 million , despite 28 identified attacks.
It must be said that security has been significantly strengthened , following previous attacks with resounding effects for these crypto-exchanges . In addition, thanks to their cooperation with each other and countermeasures , platforms like KuCoin have been able to successfully recover a large part of the funds initially stolen.
Conversely, a new phenomenon of crypto-asset diversion has emerged this year 2020 , with the advent of decentralized finance (the famous DeFi ).
Thus, no less than 47 attacks or exploitations of flaws in smart contracts have been identified on decentralized applications (DApps) of the Ethereum blockchain (ETH). We can also count 6 more on the DApps of the Tron (TRX) and EOS blockchains (3 for each).
Counting Ethereum’s alone, that’s more than $ 436 million in embezzled cryptos.
The crypto world is highly susceptible to cyber attacks. Over $ 3.8 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen in 2020.
In terms of stolen value, scams and direct theft of blockchain wallets represented the most lucrative targets : just over $ 3 billion ! In just 27 attacks .
The “51%” attacks aimed at taking control of the production of blocks of transactions on a blockchain did not pay off very much, compared to other cyberattacks: $ 5.91 million . We will especially remember Ethereum Classic (ETC), which was entitled to several 51% attacks during 2021.