35 major hacks and "rug pulls" have wiped out billions of dollars, making October a terrible month for the cryptocurrency market.
At the beginning of October, Binance's BSC Token Hub bridge was attacked by hackers, with an estimated loss of $586 million. Data from BscScan showed that a series of transactions were executed to transfer a large amount of tokens from the BSC Token Hub to an unknown wallet address.
Another hack on Wintermute's DeFi platform took away $160 million worth of cryptocurrency. The decentralized organization FriesDAO lost $2.3 million because its wallet-generating browser was infected with malware. A smart contract dedicated to UvToken's multi-chain staking crypto wallet service was attacked by hackers, resulting in $1.45 million in tokens being stolen and the traces erased using the Tornado Cash mixer.
Also in October, hackers attacked the crypto lending platform Mango Markets and claimed their exploitation of the vulnerability was legal. Following community efforts, the hacker agreed to return $67 million to the project and kept $47 million as a "bounty" for discovering the bug.
On October 23, the crypto trading platform Freeway unexpectedly announced on Twitter the suspension of transactions related to its high-yield deposit service, Supercharger, citing "volatility in the foreign exchange and cryptocurrency markets." On its homepage, Freeway stated that Superchargers offered up to 43% annual returns for users—who could deposit both fiat and cryptocurrencies to receive this massive profit.
Following the announcement, no customers could withdraw their money or execute any transactions related to Superchargers. According to CoinGecko, 24 hours later, the price of Freeway's token plummeted by 75%. Users were furious because the company arbitrarily halted trading without following any rules. Cointelegraph called this a classic "rug pull," taking $60 million of users' funds with it. A "rug pull" is a popular term since 2021, referring to a scenario where a crypto development team abruptly abandons a project and makes off with all the investors' money.
A series of other incidents involving Transit Swap ($29 million), Team Finance ($13 million), or Moola ($9 million)... within just a few weeks made October akin to a chain of nightmares for the crypto market. The causes of these hacks were primarily related to users' compromised e-wallets, insecure smart contract codes, unsustainable protocols, breached cross-chain bridges, and price manipulation.
A report from DeFiYield released on November 1 showed that in October alone, the cryptocurrency market lost over $1 billion due to hacker attacks and scams. Out of 35 major incidents, there were 15 rug pulls. The only positive signal in DeFiYield's report was that about $890 million from the hacks had been recovered by the end of October 31.
Meanwhile, in a report on October 31, PeckShield, a blockchain security company, stated that in just one month, the market experienced 44 hacks affecting at least 53 protocols, of which only about $100 million was returned.
From the beginning of the year to the end of October, approximately $3 billion "evaporated" from the crypto market in connection with hacks and scams. This figure is nearly double the $1.55 billion lost in 2021. Notably, the hack on Sky Mavis's Ronin bridge caused the Vietnamese startup to lose $625 million worth of cryptocurrency.
Khuong Nha (according to Cointelegraph) - Source: vnexpress.net
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