Throughout the first half of this yr, cryptocurrency hackers stole twice as a lot as they did within the first half of 2023, based on blockchain intelligence agency TRM. By June 24, 2024, hackers had stolen $1.38 billion, in comparison with $657 million on the identical time final yr.

Much like 2023 and prior years, in 2024, a small variety of assaults constituted the vast majority of the stolen funds. 5 massive assaults accounted for 70% of all of the stolen cryptocurrencies.

The quantity of cryptocurrency stolen this yr remains to be lower than the practically $2 billion stolen within the first six months of 2022, which marked a document yr for cryptocurrency theft. In accordance with blockchain knowledge platform Chainalysis, over $3.8 billion price of cryptocurrency was stolen from customers in 2022.

The report stated hackers’ commonest technique of stealing crypto in 2024 was gaining unauthorized entry to personal keys and seed codes, that are the strings of numbers that permit one to entry a crypto pockets. Hackers additionally exploited sensible contracts and flash loans.

The most important assault in 2024 stole over $300 million price of Bitcoin and 4,500 tokens from the Japanese crypto trade DMM Bitcoin, per the report.

The largest cryptocurrency hack up to now passed off in March 2022 when hackers attacked the Ronnin community supporting the favored Axie Infinity blockchain gaming platform. They stole roughly $625 million price of Ethereum and the USDC stablecoin.

The heist concerned 173,600 Ether price just below $595 million and $25.5 million in USDC. U.S. officers acknowledged {that a} North Korea-backed hacking group, Lazarus Group, was accountable for the theft. A month later, Binance recovered $5.8 million of the stolen funds, nevertheless it stays the biggest hack in historical past.