Peckshield’s blockchain firm reported that the crypto sector suffered losses of $3 billion due to hacks or scams by 2024. This represents a 15% rise from 2023 when it lost $2.61billion.
Hacks accounted for $2.15 billion—or over 70%—of total losses, a 42.38% increase from $1.51 billion in 2023, while scams contributed $834.5 million, as per the security firm’s annual report.
In 2024, it was more difficult to retrieve stolen funds. About $488.5 millions worth of crypto assets stolen in 2024 were recovered. This represents a decrease of 27.62% from the $674.9 recovered in 2020.
Although recovering almost half a billion dollar is an encouraging step, the sheer amount of money stolen has exposed the need for more security in the entire industry.
PeckShield didn’t immediately reply to Decrypt’s Request for comments
DeFi Under Fire
The Decentralized Financial (DeFi), protocols were the most vulnerable as cyber-criminals continued to target their weaknesses.
Peckshield identifies May as the worst month with losses soaring to $662.2 Million. Losses of more than $280 millions each were recorded in July and August.
December, however, saw a notable decline, with losses dropping to $46.5 million—the lowest monthly total of the year.
In the top ten largest thefts in 2017, the Japanese DMM Bitcoin hack accounted for $305 million. It was closely followed by PlayDapp’s $290-million breach and a Bitcoin scam of $238 million.
Bitcoin Scam: A Genesis Creditor fell victim to social engineering by scammers pretending to be Google Support. ZachXBT of onchain said that the thieves stole 4,064 BTC.
Both the Indian crypto exchange WazirX (Indian Crypto Exchange) and Gala Games (Indian Crypto Exchange), which suffered losses of $230 million each, and $212,000,000 respectively, also experienced substantial losses.
Increase in Phishing
CertiK, a blockchain-based security firm, warned last week of the threat of increasing phishing scams. This was deemed the greatest security challenge in 2024.
Certik’s Web3 annual security report noted that the scams which tricked victims into sharing sensitive data such as keys private, resulted in over $1 Billion in losses in 296 incidents.
This company reported a loss average per phishing attack that was higher than most other attacks. In 2024, at least three phishing scams resulted each in a loss of more than $100 million.
There have been some recent business developments in the crypto-security sector. Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics company, recently acquired Hexagate – a Web3 provider of security.
Stacy Elliott is the editor.
