Cyvers, a Web3 cybersecurity firm, has reported a significant surge in crypto losses due to hacks and scams in 2024. The first three quarters of the year have already witnessed a record-breaking $2.1 billion in losses, surpassing the total amount lost throughout 2023.
Centralized finance (CeFi) operators were hit harder than decentralized finance (DeFi) operators, with a 984% year-on-year increase in the three quarters of 2024. Much of that came in the second quarter of the year when $401 million was lost.
The Q2 losses came predominantly from five incidents. The largest of those was the hack of Japanese exchange DMM, which netted $305 million in Bitcoin BTC $65,433.61 through a private-key hack.
Turkish exchange BtcTurk was in second place that quarter with a loss of $55 million.
Cyvers said in a preview of its third quarter report provided exclusively to Cointelegraph:
“The surge in CeFi vulnerabilities underscores the need for improved access control mechanisms and regulatory oversight.”
Losses in the DeFi sector dropped 25% year-on-year in Q2, “reflecting a more resilient ecosystem.” Still, losses came to $171.3 million from 62 incidents, mainly concentrated on Ethereum and the BNB Smart Chain:
“DeFi remains vulnerable due to the complexity of smart contracts and decentralized protocols.”
Overall, more bad actors targeted DeFi than CeFi. In the first three quarters, $1.6 billion was lost to access control vulnerabilities across 51 incidents, compared to $742.6 million in 16 incidents in the same period of 2023.
Smart contract vulnerabilities cost $380.4 million in 79 incidents in 2024, down from $429.6 million lost in 28 incidents in the same period of 2023.
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