2022 was certainly a difficult 12 months for the crypto business, marked by vital declines within the worth of main property, liquidity points for a lot of corporations, and an unlucky variety of chapter filings. The business additionally confronted substantial safety threats as hackers stole billions of {dollars} from customers and DeFi protocols.
A report by blockchain safety agency SlowMist, titled “Blockchain Safety and AML Evaluation,” supplied an outline of the safety standing of varied sectors inside the crypto business, analyzing the circulate of stolen funds in additional than 300 hacks that occurred in 2022.
Hackers Stole Over $3.7B in 2022
In line with the doc, 303 blockchain-related safety incidents occurred final 12 months, leading to losses of an estimated $3.7 billion (calculated on the market worth on the time of the exploit).
The quantity misplaced represents a 61% drop from the $9.795 billion misplaced in 2021, though SlowMist didn’t contemplate the worth misplaced resulting from market volatility.
The report revealed that about 255 safety incidents affected numerous ecosystems, together with DeFi, cross-chain bridges, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Moreover, there have been ten safety incidents involving crypto exchanges, 11 attacking public chains, six exploiting wallets, and 21 of different sorts.
The DeFi ecosystem misplaced $2.075 billion to hackers, roughly 55% of the full losses for the 12 months, whereas cross-chain bridges recorded $1.212 billion of stolen funds, about 32% of your entire quantity in the course of the 12 months.
Per the paper, there have been 56 safety incidents reported within the NFT area, leading to losses totaling over $65.44 million.
“Many of those incidents have been brought on by phishing assaults, accounting for about 39% (22 incidents), adopted by Rug Pulls, accounting for about 21% (12 incidents). The remaining 30% (17 incidents) have been brought on by contract vulnerabilities or different inner components,” the report said.
BNB Chain – The Largest Hack Sufferer in 2022
The report reveals that BNB Chain (previously often called Binance Sensible Chain – BSC) was the most important sufferer of blockchain safety incidents final 12 months. The blockchain skilled 79 assaults, leading to losses of as much as $785 million.
The analysis discovered that blockchain mixers gained recognition final 12 months, with them being the favourite instrument for hackers to launder their ill-gotten proceeds. Per the report, 1,233,129 ETH (approx. $2.83 billion) was deposited to the now-sanctioned crypto mixer Twister Money, whereas 40,065 BTC was deposited to ChipMixer in 2022.
The report additionally revealed that some business initiatives have began implementing efficient measures for blockchain anti-money laundering to stop attackers from benefiting from their crimes.
Stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle blocked 376 addresses in 2022 to stop funds within the wallets from being moved out by attackers.
In the meantime, whereas crypto theft exceeded $3.7 billion in 2022, one other report revealed that illicit crypto transactions reached a document excessive of $20 billion throughout the identical interval.
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