Crypto Hacks in August Amount to $163M, Up 15% From July: PeckShield

The most detrimental trend in crypto continues to wreak havoc on the industry, with each month seeing an increase in severity for users and institutions.

Crimes continue to evolve in complexity and type, making it increasingly difficult to react promptly and minimize losses.

Rise in Numbers

Blockchain security firm PeckShield released its report from last month, disclosing the unfortunate rise in crypto crimes over the past two months. The findings indicate that July saw $142 million lost to exploits, whereas August marked a 15% increase, marking a total of $163 million in losses.

The post (embed) highlights the most vicious attacks, with the most prominent being a social engineering heist exceeding $91M in stolen Bitcoin from a long-time holder.

The largest crypto exchange in Turkey, BtcTurk, follows, with over $50 million vanished. This is also the second instance where a security vulnerability of theirs has been exploited over the last year.

Memecoin launchpad Odin.fun was drained of $7M in Bitcoin due to a manipulation in their automated market maker (AMM), linked to Chinese hackers. Additionally, DeFi bank BetterBank.io was robbed of $5 million, despite having recently been audited by Zokyo.

The last incident noted is that of the lending platform CrediX, which launched recently, where a bad actor abused various administrative roles within the protocol and hijacked $4.5M.

Crime Never Sleeps

Reports indicate that this year is currently the worst for cryptocurrency hacks, and with this pace, the losses will likely exceed $4 billion by the end of 2025.

Personal wallet compromises represent a growing share of the thefts, with over 23% of the attacks being linked to individual users year to date.

“Wrench” or physical attacks are also a rising trend, closely following Bitcoin price movements, showing an increase in this type of violence in periods of price jumps.

The highest concentration of victims seems to be from the United States, Germany, Russia, and Canada, among a few other countries.

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