Markets saw a dip in theft and exploits over the summer. It has been reported that hacker activity has increased again since Chainalysis last reported on the issue.
According to Chainalysis, $718 million was stolen from 11 different DeFi protocols with four new exploits on Tuesday.
This means that October is now the most popular month for hacker exploits after only two weeks.
Chainalysis reports that this brings the total for the year to $3Billion across 125 hacks. 2022 is on track to surpass the record of $3.2B for stolen cryptocurrency funds last year.
The most recent hacks include \$100,000,000 stolen from Mango Markets and a Solana DeFi trading platform; an \$1 Million exploit taken from QAN platform’s bridge to the Ethereum network; as well as a \$2.3M hack of TempleDAO tokens.
Rabby Wallet also discovered an exploit Tuesday. This is an Ethereum wallet service. Although the full extent of the exploit is not yet known, the team behind the project said that they had “requested negotiations with the hacker” on Tuesday.
It wasn’t always clear that 2022 would be a major year for crypto thieves.
Criminals stole \$1.7 Billion from DeFi in the first five months, causing a frenzy of activity.
However, activity declined as the market responded to the EarthUSD collapse and bankruptcies at Three Arrows Capital and Voyager Digital.
In August, Chainalysis published an update to say that illicit activity had fallen by 15% in volume as most forms of “cryptocurrency-based crime” were down with the rest of the market.
The activity has increased significantly, however.
Chainalysis tweeted that “Cross-chain Bridges are still a major target of hackers” and “Three bridges were breached this month with nearly $600 Million stolen. This accounts for 82% of all losses this month, and 64% for the entire year.”
