Blockchain Attacks Witnessed By Crypto Lovers

Blockchain is one of the safest technologies available thanks to its decentralized structure, encryption, and the ability to verify transactions at any time. But new security dangers are appearing, and they provide the potential for catastrophic, long-lasting harm.

The amount of money stolen in crypto attacks in 2019 was $4.25 billion, approximately three times the amount stolen in 2020 of $1.49 billion. Six out of the leading 10 most costly crypto breaches in history occurred in 2021, according to data collected by Comparitech.

In 2021, another poll found that the most popular method of stealing cryptocurrency was through the use of vulnerabilities in decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols. Over the past year, $1.4 billion in crypto assets have been lost due to DeFi. According to the research, as the technology is still in its infancy, it is riddled with security flaws that hackers take advantage of on a regular basis.

These and other initiatives highlight the need for blockchain platforms to move beyond relying on their intrinsic security and instead adopt extra controls and protections while also bringing in external auditors to evaluate their safety.

In this post, we will examine the most prevalent blockchain-related assaults that have been made and the most problematic ledger flaws that have made them possible.

Top Five Blockchain Attacks

Wormhole

In February of 2022, a hacker gained access to the Wormhole cryptocurrency platform. The platform functions as a communication centre for competing cryptocurrencies like Solana and other autonomous financial networks.

One such competitor is Ethereum. The overall damage sustained by the company came to 326 million dollars.

Additionally, Wormhole offered a timeline of the event on their Twitter account. The security flaw in the system was patched by the corporation barely 6 hours after the hack, and the funds were restored early the next morning.

 In addition to this, the token key, which had been rendered inoperable by hackers during the attack, was promptly restored.

BitMart

As a result of the theft of a private key, hackers were able to break the encryption on two hot wallets that were connected to the BitMart cryptocurrency exchange. A private key is one component of a cryptographic pairing that is supposed to be kept a secret.

The group said in a tweet announcing the finding of the loss that $100 million of the robbery occurred on the Ethereum blockchain.

The business halted all of its transactional capabilities for a few days until it was ready to declare that there had been an improvement in security.

BitMart’s users were reassured by the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Sheldon Xia, that the company would find a solution to the problem and compensate affected customers using company funds.

Though after these attacks, trading bots like the-patterntrader-pro.com are modified to another level. So now people can secure their stored digital currencies as well as attain wise trading indicators too.

Poly Network

The hacker of Poly Network took advantage of vulnerabilities in the platform’s infrastructure and stole over $600 million in money. The perpetrator of the incident approached the company and made an offer to return the majority of the assets, with the exception of the $33 million of tether (USDT) that the issuers had locked.

But that wasn’t the end of the story: $200 million worth of the stolen monies were stashed in an account for which the attacker and Poly Network were both required to provide a key.

At first, the hacker would not hand out passwords from their end. Up until the point where Poly Network begged them to divulge it, offered them a reward of $500,000 for finding the system fault, and even promised them a job opportunity in the future, they did not tell it.

After some time had passed, Poly Network revealed that an unknown individual known only as “Mr White Hat” had provided them with the secret key.

MT Gox

The theft from the Bitcoin exchange MT Gox was the very first serious exchange hack, and it is still remembered as the largest Bitcoin exchange heist to this day. The theft that took place at MT Gox involved more than one separate occurrence. Instead, the website incurred financial losses between the years 2011 and February 2014.

Hackers were able to steal 750,000 bitcoins from users of the site and 100,000 coins from the company itself over the course of a few years. Before the price increase, these bitcoins were worth $470 million; their current value, $4.7 billion, is roughly ten times higher.

Shortly after the event, MT Gox went bankrupt, and the liquidators were able to retrieve approximately 200,000 of the seized bitcoins.

Liquid Global

The hackers gained access to Liquid’s hot wallet and took 67 different cryptocurrencies, including Ether, Bitcoins, and XRP. More than 78% of the losses were caused by assets based on Ethereum.

A portion of the stolen assets was moved utilising cutting-edge platforms such as UniSwap, while the money that was transported to other large cryptocurrency exchanges was retained at the request of the corporation. The trading activity on the site was resumed after the unaffected assets were moved to cold wallets and the platform’s security was increased by the addition of safe vaults.

In addition, the company guaranteed its clients that there would be “no impact on user balances,” and it eventually acquired $120 million from the FTX crypto market in order to compensate its clients and cover its financial losses.

The Bottom Line

In peer-to-peer ecosystems, like the blockchain, where anybody can join the network anonymously and participate, defects in the blockchain network could be incredibly expensive. When an individual’s identity is concealed, it is far more difficult to make corrections to errors.

As a result, it is absolutely necessary to be aware of the security flaws as well as the many different kinds of attacks which cybercriminals can undertake in order to identify them and make the necessary corrections in advance.

Because blockchain transactions cannot be undone, using the technology first requires a comprehensive understanding of its underlying concepts, as well as thorough security assessments and testing.