Report: Losses from hacks and scams in Q3 total $889 million

From July through September, the crypto industry lost about $889.3 million to hacks, frauds, and rug pull. Beosin analysts provided the figures.

The total losses from hacks, phishing scams, and rug pulls in Web3 reached $889.26 million in Q3 2023.

Losses in Q3 even exceeded the combined sum of the first two quarters ($330 million in Q1 and $333 million in Q2).

Read the full pdf version of Q3 2023 Global Web3 Security… https://t.co/aoPWOrRBeZ pic.twitter.com/5f3uYpG27e

— Beosin Alert (@BeosinAlert) September 27, 2023

Losses were distributed as follows:

• $540.16 million — 43 hacker attacks;
• $282.96 million — 81 rug-pull incidents;
• $66.15 million — phishing scams.

For the third quarter, the crypto industry lost more than in the first half of the year overall ($655 million).

67.4% of attacks were on DeFi protocols (29 incidents). In monetary terms, the largest loss was recorded in the attack on blockchains (Mixin Network, $200 million). After Curve ($73 million), CoinEx ($70 million), Alphapo ($60 million), Stake ($41.3 million).

In terms of blockchains, Ethereum was hardest hit — 16 attacks left projects with $227 million. In second place (excluding the Mixin incident) was BNB Chain (10 incidents with losses of $37.4 million).

Among rug-pull incidents, Multichain ($210 million), Bald ($23 million) and Pepe ($15.5 million) stood out.

According to the analysts, only 10% of assets stolen by hackers were recovered. By comparison, in the first half of the year the figure stood at 45.5%. 67% of funds remained at the hackers’ addresses, 18.4% passed through mixers.

Earlier, Chainalysis calculated that as of September 14, North Korean hackers had stolen $340.4 million. A third of this sum was obtained in just two attacks attributed to Lazarus.

Earlier, investigators found bitcoins worth $42.5 million on the hackers’ wallets.