On the historical timeline of hacker attacks, 2022 will soon overtake 2021 as the most recent entry. But October of this year is particularly fatal – with close to $718 million in crypto assets being hacked in just 12 days, as reported by an analytics firm Chainalysis on October 12th.
According to the analytics firm’s tweet, this staggering sum of crypto funds has been stolen via 11 different Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, hacks, or exploits from this month.
Chainalysis also claimed that 2021 had been the biggest year yet for blockchain-based cyberattacks, with $3 billion in total value stolen and 125 different assaults. However, it’s likely that 2022 will probably surpass this figure at the current pace of these types of crimes.
Furthermore, the firm observed a change in where hacks are happening this year. Decentralized (DeFi) protocols are the most popular targets for hacking this year as compared to the year 2019, when centralized exchanges made up most of the targets.
In addition, Chainalysis asserts that hackers stole $1.3 billion in the first three months of this year, and a disproportionately high percentage of victims—nearly 97%, up from 72% in 2021 and only 30% in 2020—are DeFi protocols. Some of these most damaging hacks are typically due to coding issues as “faulty code.”
October’s DeFi Crypto Exploits
“Cross-chain bridges remain a major target for hackers, with three bridges breached this month and nearly $600 million stolen.” As it stands now, these thefts account for about 82% of all losses for this month, as well as 64% of all losses so far, according to Chainalysis.
The first record-breaking October count began when an exploit of Binance’s BNB Chain led to the loss of $100 million in crypto assets. After that, three DeFi protocols have recently been the victim of hacking efforts.
The yield farming protocol TempleDAO was first targeted on October 11th. From it, the hacker moved almost $2.34 million (1,831 ETH). Second, the Mango Markets, a decentralized finance platform, was breached on Wednesday, October 12th. The attack included manipulating oracle pricing, resulting in a loss of $100 million in crypto.
Moreover, the breach of the quantum-resistant layer-1 blockchain known as QANplatform is the third attack against the DeFi community. A bridge vulnerability was used in the assault, which cost the protocol over $1 million(1.46 billion QANX tokens).
Nevertheless, their tokens’ prices have been heavily affected by the recent removal of such large quantities from their available supply. As per CoinGecko statistics, the QANX token has lost 99.82% of its value since reaching an all-time high in November, with a daily chart indicating a loss of 16% and a weekly loss of 95.0%, respectively.
Similarly, Mango (MNGO), which has fallen 95% from its All-Time High price in September and lost 45% of its value over the previous week and 22.2% over the past day, is currently trading at $0.02205712.
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