Crypto Hack Losses Drop 60% in December

While the decline suggests a slowdown in the scale of successful attacks, several high-impact incidents—including a $50 million address poisoning scam, a $27.3 million multi-signature wallet breach, and exploits affecting Trust Wallet and the Flow protocol—show that security risks are still elevated.

Hack Losses Ease in December

Losses from hacks and cybersecurity exploits in the crypto industry fell sharply in December, offering a modest sign of improvement after a volatile year for digital asset security. According to data from blockchain security firm PeckShield, total losses linked to crypto-related attacks reached roughly $76 million during the month, which was a steep 60% decline from November’s $194.2 million. While the lower figure suggests a slowdown in the scale of successful attacks, analysts warn that the underlying risks facing users and platforms are still significant.

PeckShield reported a total of 26 major crypto exploits in December. One of the most severe incidents involved a single user losing approximately $50 million through an address poisoning scam. 

This type of attack relies on subtle deception rather than technical vulnerabilities, with attackers sending small transactions from wallet addresses designed to closely resemble legitimate ones. These fake addresses often share the same first and last characters as the intended destination, increasing the likelihood that a victim might mistakenly select the fraudulent address from their transaction history without carefully reviewing the full string.

Another major loss that was pointed out by PeckShield involved a private key leak tied to a multi-signature wallet, resulting in roughly $27.3 million in stolen funds. Incidents like this prove that even more sophisticated wallet setups are not immune to user-side security failures, especially when private keys are exposed through poor operational practices or compromised environments.

Beyond these large individual losses, December also saw several platform-level exploits. Among them was a Christmas-time hack affecting Trust Wallet, in which around $7 million in user funds were drained via vulnerabilities linked to its browser extension. PeckShield also pointed to a $3.9 million exploit involving the Flow protocol. 

Despite the month-over-month decline in stolen funds, security experts place a lot of emphasis on the fact that users should not interpret the data as a signal that risks are diminishing. Instead, they prove the importance of vigilance and basic security hygiene. 

Simple practices like verifying every character of a wallet address before sending funds can greatly reduce the risk of address poisoning scams. Similarly, storing private keys on hardware wallets is still widely considered one of the safest approaches to crypto asset storage.

Overall, December’s figures suggest that while the scale of losses can vary, the threat landscape is still active and changing.