In the latest crypto swindle hitting the weekend, Liechtenstein-based LCX Exchange suffered a security breach in one of its hot wallets that took place in the early hours of 9 January 2022. Announcing the same via Twitter, the trading platform has detailed the exploit in a series of threads and stated that Ethereum blockchain-based assets such as ETH, USDC, EURe, LCX, and other coins have been moved out to an unknown wallet. Further, the firm assured that security measures are being deployed to protect other wallets and assets.
Blockchain security firm PeckShield Inc has identified the estimated loss to the tune of $6.8 million and provided the breakdown of the lost funds for a clearer picture. Security breaches like these are not new in the crypto ecosystem, As crypto-assets gained increased adoption in 2021, so did such incidents of hacks across centralized exchanges and the DeFi sector.
Crypto heist in 2021
Previously on December 12, 2021, Singaporean cryptocurrency exchange AscendEX, suffered a major security attack with cyber security firm PeckShield stating, an estimated $77.7 million has been lost. The new year too didn’t fare well for the DeFi community, as the decentralized trading platform Tinyman built on the Algorand network was subjected to an exploit causing a loss of roughly $3 million on the 1st of January 2022, according to researchers at PeckShield.
As stated in the blog post, the attacker was able to take advantage of some loopholes in the network’s smart contracts protocol that provided illegal access to pools from which they could extract tokens.
Based on the data compiled by the consumer website Comparitech, five of the 10 largest crypto thefts of all time have occurred in 2021. And these incidents may only continue to grow due to increased cryptocurrency usage, as per financial tech experts. Rebecca Moody, head of research at Comparitech noted,
What’s clear from the majority of these attacks this year is that it’s often a vulnerability that’s being exploited. With the industry growing at an exponential rate and relying on open source technology, this leaves platforms open to exploitation when hackers are able to find a weakness in the code.
