Cryptocurrency industry lost over $ 150 million due to hacker attack

The growing number of phishing attacks, wallet hacking, and other security incidents is causing increasing tension in the cryptocurrency community. According to CertiK, in May 2024 alone, users lost about $ 140.1 million in the crypto market due to hacker attacks, fraud, and smart contract exploits. An additional $ 162 million was blocked, but phishing schemes led to losses of $ 8.5 million.

Recently, CertiK reported a large-scale hack on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC): the attacker withdrew almost $ 2 million using the printMoney () function in a smart contract. The hacker, who acted from the address 0xd5c6f3…122c, repeatedly activated this function through an authorized contract, thus gaining control over other people’s tokens. The authorization for the operations was granted from the victim’s compromised contract (0xb5cb0) about eight hours before the attack, likely through phishing or other private key leakage.

The exploiters quickly converted the stolen tokens into BNB and stablecoins, and currently have about $ 1.96 million in assets on their wallet. This is just one of a number of high-profile attacks this year: Coinbase lost $ 400 million, Cetus on the Sui network lost $ 220 million, and Phemex and UPCX exchanges also reported significant losses.

CertiK’s analysis shows that the most common causes of losses are trust in unverified smart contracts and insufficient protection of private keys. It was this negligence that allowed the hacker in the case of BSC to take possession of the victim’s tokens. Experts advise users and developers to carefully check permissions for contracts, use only verified code, and avoid hasty actions when interacting with decentralized services.

CertiK continues to monitor the activity of the attacker’s wallet and urges the community to be careful: check all transactions, do not open suspicious emails, and use multi-factor protection for private keys.