[NEWS] Cryptocurrency hack damages in November exceed 50 billion yen, the highest amount this year

Blockchain security company CertiK announced that the losses from cryptocurrency hacking in November this year reached approximately $363 million (approximately 53.3 billion yen).

This was due in part to withdrawal fraud, which caused projects to disappear along with investor funds, leading to a loss of trust in fast-growing platforms and new cryptocurrencies, resulting in a loss of approximately $1.1 million (approximately 161.55 million yen).

The largest proportion of the losses was the outflow of cryptocurrencies due to the hacking, which reached a total of approximately $316.4 million (approximately 46.4 billion yen). In particular, the hacking of cryptocurrency exchanges Poloniex and HTX (formerly Huobi Global) alone caused losses of more than $250 million (approximately 36.7 billion yen).

According to an official statement, the damage from the hack of Poloniex, owned by Justin Sun, the founder of the cryptocurrency TRX, is more than $100 million. The recovery work after the damage has already been completed.

Poloniex's security team said that the leak of private keys was likely the cause of the hack, and disabled the wallet after discovering the suspicious leak. The team is currently investigating the hack and will fully compensate affected users.

HTX suffered more than $30 million in unauthorized leaks due to the hack. According to an official statement, HTX's loss this time is a small amount compared to the total funds of the platform. It also stated that it will fully compensate for the losses from this attack and guarantee the safety of user funds 100%.

The hacking attack on decentralized finance exchange Kyber caused a loss of $48 million. The damage caused by the flash loan attack on Kyber reached $45.5 million.

The sophisticated hacking attack on Kyber exploited the lending mechanism of the DeFi platform, allowing attackers to investigate market prices and withdraw funds.

▶ List of large-scale hacking damage (Quote: CertiK Alert)

According to Certik, as of the end of November, the damage caused by hacking, fraud, and flash loan attacks in 2023 has reached approximately $1.7 billion.

This is 54% of the total amount of $3.7 billion in 2022, and although it can be said that the level of security in the cryptocurrency industry is increasing, it is by no means a small number. It was reported that the same amount of $1.7 billion was reported in 2021.

Certik co-founder Ronghui Gu argued that standard smart contract audits are not enough, saying SIM swapping and multi-signature vulnerabilities are the latest security holes being targeted.

Reference:Announcement
Image: Shutterstock

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