From 2012 to the present, over $30 billion in crypto has been hacked in 1,101 documented incidents, a July 7 report from SlowMist has revealed.
According to the blockchain security firm, the top five most common hacks are smart contract vulnerabilities, rug pulls, flash loan attacks, scams and private key leaks. The losses represent roughly 2.5% of the current market capitalization of cryptocurrencies.
Out of total incidents, there were 118 exchange hacks, 217 Ethereum ecosystem hacks, 162 BNB Smart Chain ecosystem hacks, 119 EOS ecosystem hacks and 85 hacks related to nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. Exchange losses were the steepest, amounting to over $10 billion lost in the past decade.
Hack events with over $1 billion lost peaked in the early 2010s and from 2019 to 2021. Security incidents have been somewhat muted from 2022 onwards, which is consistent with other reports.
In the early days of Bitcoin (BTC), notable attacks included the 2014 Mt. Gox hack and the 2016 Bitfinex hack. Mt. Gox was the biggest Bitcoin exchange in the world at the time when it filed for bankruptcy in 2014 after discovering that 850,000 of its customers’ BTC ($25.2 billion at the time of publication) had been stolen via discreet hacks and siphoning over several years. The exchange has since recovered 200,000 BTC ($6.1 billion) and is redistributing them to creditors.
Likewise, in 2016, Bitfinex suffered a security breach resulting in the loss of 119,576 BTC worth around $70 million at the time and $3.7 billion now. On Feb. 8, 2022, 94,000 stolen BTC was recovered by special agents working for the United States Department of Justice.
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