Crypto Crime Losses Fall to $28.6 Million in December, Down from $63.8 Million in November
Date: 2025-01-02 Author: Henry Casey Categories: IN WORLD
The crypto industry saw a significant decline in losses from fraud, hacks, and exploits at the end of 2024. According to CertiK, losses for December totaled $28.6 million, down significantly from $63.8 million in November and $115.8 million in October.
CertiK clarified in a Dec. 31 report that the bulk of those losses — $26.7 million — came from exploits.
One of the most notable incidents was the hack of DeFi platform GemPad, where attackers stole $2.1 million through a vulnerability in a smart contract. In addition, the token bridge of another DeFi project, FEG, was attacked, resulting in the loss of $1 million. The reason for the hack was a violation of the verification of inter-chain messages.
PeckShield also noted a significant decrease in hacking attacks in December, reporting losses of $24.7 million, a 71% decrease from November. The largest incident was the LastPass hack on December 16-17, which resulted in the theft of $12.3 million. This attack was a consequence of the theft of a backup copy of data in December 2022, which continues to affect the industry to this day.
PeckShield also recorded the loss of $2.2 million on the Yei Finance platform due to a hack on December 2.
According to Cyvers’ Web3 Security Report 2024, $2.3 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen in 165 incidents during the year, up 40% from 2023 but down 37% from 2022.
Another report from Immunefi found that the crypto industry lost $1.49 billion due to hacks and fraud, down 17% from 2023. Of that, hacks accounted for $1.47 billion (98.1% of all losses).
The two biggest incidents of the year involved Japanese exchange DMM Bitcoin, which lost $305 million in May due to a private key leak, and Indian exchange WazirX, which lost $235 million in July after an Ethereum wallet was hacked. These two incidents accounted for 36% of all losses for the year.
DeFi protocols continued to be the main target of hackers, accounting for 51.4% of all losses. Centralized platforms (CeFi) accounted for 48.6%, with their losses growing by 77.5% year-over-year, reaching $726 million.
Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain remained the most attacked blockchains. Ethereum suffered 104 attacks, accounting for 44% of all chain losses.
