Crypto Project Losses from Hacks and Scams Drop to $67 Million in February

In February, the cryptocurrency industry suffered losses of approximately $67 million due to hacker attacks and fraud across 12 different incidents, according to a report by Immunefi.

The damage was roughly half of January’s figure of ~$126.8 million.

In February, nearly all losses were attributed to hacks of the gaming platform PlayDapp ($32.35 million) and the decentralized exchange FixedFloat ($26.1 million). The cryptocurrency casino Duelbits lost $4.6 million due to a compromised private key.

Throughout the reporting month, all attack vectors were linked to the DeFi sector, while centralized platforms did not record any significant incidents. A similar situation was observed in January.

In terms of networks, Ethereum was the clear leader, being involved in 10 of the reported cases. One incident each was related to the Bitcoin and BNB Chain blockchains.

Notably, following a second attack on PlayDapp three days after the exploit, the perpetrator issued an additional 1.59 billion PLA tokens valued at $253.9 million at the time. However, as predicted by Elliptic experts, laundering such a volume proved challenging for the hacker in the current market conditions.

Immunefi estimated the total damage from hacks and fraud since the beginning of the year at ~$200.5 million.

In January, the company’s experts did not include in their statistics the theft of ~213 million XRP worth $112.5 million from the personal wallet of Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen. Some of the stolen assets were successfully frozen.

At the end of February, Sky Mavis’s Jeffrey Zirlin reported a breach of two of his wallets. The attackers withdrew 3248 ETH, amounting to about $9.7 million.

On February 23, on-chain researcher ZachXBT identified a suspicious outflow of assets worth ~$56.5 million from the hot wallets of the Bitforex exchange.