Report: Crypto industry losses from hacks and scams rise 60% year on year

In the third quarter losses of the Web3-ecosystem from hacks and fraud reached $685.5 million — up 59.9% from the figure for the same period year-on-year, according to Immunefi.

Year-on-year, the number of incidents rose by 153% — from 30 to 76.

Of the total quarterly losses, $662.85 million stemmed from 49 hacking attacks, and $22.7 million from 27 scams.

Almost half of total losses were driven by two largest incidents: the Mixin Network exploits ($200 million) and Multichain ($126 million).

According to the report, the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking outfit, was responsible for the theft of $208.6 million in the third quarter — 30% of the total loss. Immunefi linked its activity to hacks on CoinEx, Alphapo, Stake and Coinspaid.

Bounty-platform specialists noted that the main target of attackers remained DeFi projects. Their share of losses for the quarter was 72.9% ($499.8 million) versus 27.1% for centralized services ($185.7 million).

By network, the most incidents were recorded in the Ethereum (35) and BNB Chain (25) ecosystems. Since the public launch in early August of the Base L2 protocol, four Base-based projects have been subjected to exploits.

Experts say victims recovered 8.9% of total losses in the third quarter. The restitution amounted to $61.2 million across six cases.

Beosin put the quarter’s industry losses from hacks and scams at $889.3 million.