October 2022: The Largest Crypto Hacks Month So Far?
As the cryptocurrency industry grows, it is constantly being bombarded by hackers. And while it wasn't a big deal at first, today, when cryptocurrencies are a multi-billion dollar business and tokens can be easily withdrawn or traded, hackers seem to have a keen interest in breaching the security of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges and killing millions. of people. to steal . dollars. Learn more about the latest crypto hacks in our new StealthEX article.
Cryptocurrency hacking is currently on the rise. The cryptocurrency market is at an all-time low, however, October this year appears to have been the worst month ever for cryptocurrency-related crimes, with a total loss of over $ 718 million. Two weeks to go until the end of the month.
Data from Chainalysis on Thursday showed that the amount was stolen from several decentralized financial protocols through 11 separate attacks. At the time of reporting, approximately $ 3 billion in more than 125 separate incidents in the crypto space have been mined since the beginning of the month.
The chain analysis also suggests that 2022 could exceed 2021 in terms of the number and scale of attacks. This proves that cryptocurrency exchanges and other cryptocurrency related projects need to pay more attention to their safety as any breach could result in heavy losses for their customers.
The biggest crypto hack
Binance hack: what happened
This news comes just weeks after Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, was hacked. In early October, Binance confirmed that hackers had stolen at least $ 100 million, but that number could have been much higher.
The Binance blockchain, also known as BNB Chain and Binance Smart Chain, took the rare step of suspending transactions and fund transfers after discovering a vulnerability affecting the BSC Token Hub cross-chain bridge. This bridge is designed to facilitate the transfer of resources from one standalone blockchain to another.
The popular bridge in the DeFi world has become a prime target for criminals due to flaws in their core code. BNB Chain, originally known as Binance Chain, was first developed by Binance in 2019. Like other blockchains, it has a native token called BNB that can be traded or used in games and other applications.
The BSC Token Hub Bridge vulnerability allows attackers to manipulate messages and generate new BNB tokens. Since the stolen token is not a pre-existing token from the wallet, user funds are not affected.
Subsequently, the BNB chain team acknowledged that a total of 2 million BNB (approximately $ 568 million) had initially been withdrawn. However, the hackers only managed to get away with around $ 110 million - apparently, the BNB chain managed to prevent around 80% to 90% of target funds from being stolen.
Binance Hack: More than that
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted that the company estimated the impact of the hacking to be between $ 100 million and $ 110 million.
He recently added that Binance was close to discovering the identity of the anonymous hacker who withdrew the stolen funds. According to Zhao, Binance is now "shrinking" the person or persons behind the attack after receiving advice from law enforcement about the identity of the hacker.
Later the network was forked in the v1.1.16 update to fix a software vulnerability that allowed hackers to attack the cloud. It does not replace funds that are bleeding from the network, and Binance says BSC's hard fork has worked.
FXT hack: what happened?
On October 21, Chinese cryptocurrency trader Colin Wu lost more than $ 1 million after hackers accessed his FTX account using the API associated with the trading account.
The user first realized that his account had traded DMG tokens over 5,000 times, only to find that nearly $ 1.6 million worth of Bitcoin, FTX, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies had left his account.
The reporter further pointed out that this was not an isolated incident as another FTX user, Bruce, also claimed to have been the victim of an FTX exploit. He announced he lost $ 1.5 million in the October 21 incident.
A few days before this incident, FTX announced that it had lost more than 81 ETH tokens to hackers in the early hours of October 13, 2022. 17,000 times for free.
According to a publication, the scam was carried out by stealing gasoline. The addresses of the hackers obtained more than 100 million XEN tokens and, through DoDo, Uniswap and DEX, a part of XEN was converted to 61 ETH and transferred to FTX and Binance. At press time, FTX's loss was $ 103,443, while the hackers made a profit of $ 77,618 by selling the free minted XEN tokens.
FXT hack: after
On October 24, Bankman-Fried tweeted that it was willing to pay up to $ 6 million to FTX users who were affected by an exploit in which attackers used the 3Commas API to transact on exchanges. Sam Bankman-Fried added that exchanges "would not get used to compensating users" who were "trapped by fake copies of other companies."
BitKeep Hack
Cryptocurrency wallet provider BitKeep Wallet has also fallen victim to the industry's never-ending wave of cryptocurrency hacks. Blockchain security firm PeckShield issued the first warning on Twitter on Monday, October 17, and BitKeep posted an update on the incident in the early hours of Tuesday.
After warning the public, BitKeep announced that its development team had suspended the hacker. Once attackers take control of the swap / router, they can use the support to extract value from the user's wallet. In total, more than $ 1 million worth of tokens were stolen before the BitKeep team was able to block the functionality of the exchange and prevent further attacks. After the incident, the security company urged users to take some steps to protect their funds. The wallet has also suspended its exchange services to prevent further attacks. The developer has promised to work with security agencies to track down the hackers and recover the stolen assets, promising to reward anyone who can help identify the thief.
The cryptocurrency provider also noted that the exploit took place on the BNB chain, the blockchain exploited in the Binance hack earlier this month.
Another secondary hack on OlympusDAO
OlympusDAO users were shocked after a hacker stole a 30,000-ohm chip, which equates to $ 300,000. The money is then returned to the DAO customer. But the attacker changed his mind or became a hacker during this time and a few hours later sent the money to the DAO. Hackers exploited a vulnerability in the smart contract of a new OHM Bonds product. After the attack, the blockchain security firm reported that Bond Protocol had written a buggy smart contract.
Once the vulnerability is discovered, DAO notifies members of the hack via the Discord channel. OlympusDAO said the affected funds were blocked due to poor implementation. The stolen amount is only a fraction of the $ 3.3 million bounty a hacker can get for revealing his vulnerabilities. The DAO team said at the time that they closed the troubled market.
highway scam
Freeway, a cryptocurrency aggregation platform, announced that it has temporarily suspended its services, citing volatility in the crypto and forex markets, sending its tokens into a whirlwind. Additionally, the FWT token dropped nearly 80% within hours of the announcement. The highway was not a large or well-known project, with a market value of less than $ 70 million before the crash and is now $ 10 million at current prices.
The release also states that while the above process is ongoing, Freeway will allocate capital to its core portfolio and this will work "for a transition period" and "until our new strategy is implemented" and will not purchase any simulators. Supercharger. . We still don't know what this new strategy is.
Freeway has promised its users an annual bonus of up to 43% with its Supercharger product. This is a "virtual simulation of cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies" and can only be used within the platform. The developer of the project claims to have unlocked a total value of $ 160 million via an issue posted on their website. On-chain data shows that most of the top 4,342 token holders received it in the airdrop and are unemployed. The largest whale on the platform lost over $ 16,500.
As a Twitter user named FatManTerra noted, the Freeway admin removed the team name. The Wayback Engine confirmed the removal of the Team Freeway section from the site as the eight featured CEOs are no longer listed on the site. And the section "Our partners". FatManTerra subsequently denounced the management of the platform as a scam.
Shortly before, he tweeted on the platform on Saturday, the day before the suspension of payments, warning his users.
Interpol is making progress
Following a series of harassment and phishing incidents, the international law enforcement organization Interpol has set up a special task force in Singapore to help countries tackle cryptocurrency crimes.
At a press conference in New Delhi, the police organization made the announcement ahead of the 90th General Assembly, which will be attended by prominent police officers among its 195 members.
Conclusion
Hacker attacks and scams are disrupting the cryptocurrency industry, making life difficult not only for cryptocurrency enthusiasts, but crypto platforms as well. This is a strong sign that cryptocurrency exchanges need to improve their security and that governments need to take further action against hackers and scams as global economic instability will undoubtedly make more criminals turn to the crypto space to try and exploit it.
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Tag Binance cryptocurrency hacking the cryptocurrency worldAfter October 2022: the biggest cryptocurrency hack month ever made? It first appeared in StealthEX.