Thomas Daniels
The cryptocurrency market saw a significant rise in losses to hackers and phishing attacks in August, as the industry faced ongoing market volatility. According to blockchain security firm PeckShield, the crypto sector lost approximately $313.86 million across more than ten different hacking incidents last month. Notably, over $293 million of this amount was lost to phishing schemes.
This represents an 18% increase in crypto assets stolen by fraudulent actors compared to July. Data from a report by crypto.news indicates that the previous month saw losses of $266 million through 16 separate incidents targeting cryptocurrency and decentralized finance (DeFi) companies.
High-Profile Whale Attacks
The largest heist in August involved a so-called crypto “whale” who lost 4,064 Bitcoin (BTC), valued at around $238 million, due to a phishing attack on August 19. The stolen Bitcoin was subsequently dispersed to various crypto platforms, including THORChain, KuCoin, and Railgun.
In a similar incident, another whale lost over $55 million in Dai (DAI) stablecoin through phishing. Reports indicate these funds were held in Maker, the fourth-largest DeFi protocol. On-chain data reveals that the attacker converted the stolen funds into Ethereum (ETH) and currently holds no assets in the original address used for the phishing attack.
White Hat Hackers and Other Major Breaches
On August 6, the Ronin Network experienced a breach involving a 4,000 ETH transaction, valued at $10 million. This incident, however, was conducted by white hat hackers exploiting a Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) vulnerability. The hackers returned the funds and disclosed the bug to Ronin Network’s developers, prompting the company to suggest a $500,000 reward as a bug bounty.
Other notable incidents include an unauthorized transaction worth $5.1 million and Nexera’s $1.8 million exploit, ranking as the fourth and fifth largest breaches, respectively, according to PeckShield.
