Crypto Hacks Spiked in April as $100 Million Was Lost to Exploits, CertiK Reports

Cyber-attacks within the crypto industry spiked in the recent month. Surprisingly, the main target of the bad actors was the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector in April 2023. As reported by CertiK, the crypto-related attacks drained a huge amount of up to $100 million in the previous month. The blockchain security firm noted that the approximately $103.6M was taken away because of the exploits, scams, and hacks in the meantime.

Crypto Hacks Increased in April 2023 as Exploits Took Away $100 Million

Flash-loan attacks were among the most common means to attack the crypto sector. These attacks paved the way for the drainage of nearly $19.9M. The respective attacks are frequent and keep on playing the role of the prominent point of pain for the DeFi world. In addition to this, exit scams remained successful in taking away an amount of almost $9.4 million.

Moreover, the sole biggest attack targeted MEV Bots. As a result of that, they suffered substantial losses of $25.3M because of an exploit. GDAC and Bitrue also followed this and went through losses of up to $13 million and $22 million respectively due to the exploits. In the case of exit scams, the biggest culprit turned out to be Merlin DEX. The platform siphoned nearly $2.7M in funds.

Following that, Ordinals Finance secured the 2nd position in this respect. It had up to $1M stolen in funds. The largest flash loan attacks occurred on Yearn Finance. In its case, $10.1M got stolen. Along with this, Hundred Finance witnessed the theft of almost $7.4 million. The respective attacks point out that the market of the DeFi entities requires significant development. There is a need to do considerable work to protect the DeFi investors.

It appears that the current year could match the previous year in the case of losses. This is the thing that the platforms desperately intend to avoid with more and more growth in the size of the market.

Many prominent attacks have taken place up till now during this year, with several million drained over each month. Even though rug pulls still take place, several attacks that took place this year are because of the exploitation of protocol-related logic.

One of the most noteworthy attacks aimed at Euler Finance. The hackers stole away nearly $197 million from the protocol in March. The team of the platform remained successful in recovering the funds following a negotiation with the hackers. Another significant attack dealt with Sentiment Finance. The company got deprived of nearly $1M because of the reentrancy attack.

Also, in that case, the firm’s team moved forward and negotiated with the parties responsible for attacking. As a consequence of this procedure, the hacker agreed to return the funds. Following that, a notable amount of up to 90% was returned to the platform by the hacker. Up till now, this year might appear like a good year in comparison with the last year as it has witnessed fewer exploits than 2022.

February 2023 Saw Fewer Exploits than February 2022

In February last year, the hackers took away nearly $359M. On the other hand, during that month, just $20M got stolen this year. Nevertheless, the possible reason for this is that hackers organized great attacks on just one platform. This greatly contributed to the cumulative stolen amount. The DeFi hacks of the last year were severe and the FBI offered safety tips as a result.