Industry News: Blockchain Hackers Stole $1.3 Billion In Q1 2022
Blockchain hackers stole $1.3 billion in 78 hack incidents in the first quarter of 2022, according to new research from the Atlas VPN team. Furthermore, in this quarter alone, attacks on the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems caused approximately $1 billion in losses.
The Ethereum ecosystem was hacked 18 times in the first quarter of 2022, resulting in a loss of over $636 million. The Axie Infinity sidechain Ronin Network was hacked towards the end of March, which was the most major hacking of the quarter. The entire value of the heist was $610 million, consisting of 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5 million USDC.
The Solana ecosystem was hacked five times in the first quarter of 2022, resulting in a $397 million loss. For the second time this quarter, Wormhole, a communication link between Solana and other DeFi networks, has been attacked. An attacker exploited a network signature verification weakness to generate 120K Wormhole-wrapped Ether worth $334 million on Solana.
Cybercriminals have gained access to 14 projects in the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem, causing a loss of almost $100 million. The deposit capability of the QBridge was used to attack on the Qubit protocol. As a result of the hack, the hacker was able to produce $80 million in xETH (xplosive Ethereum) collateral.
Besides, NFTs were the most popular targets for hackers, with 20 attacks and $49 million in losses. Some attackers utilize Discord to do phishing attacks in order to steal users’ NFTs. Furthermore, many scammers establish NFT projects that turn out to be rug pull scams.
More Industry News:
North Korean hackers were behind Axie Infinity crypto theft
According to the Treasury Department, the Lazarus group was behind the theft of $600M in crypto from the popular online game. The US Treasury managed to identify a digital currency address used by hackers and it was under the control of the Lazarus group. North Korea has actively used cybercrime to generate money for its military programs such as weapons of mass destruction. The parties that transact with the illicit wallet may face US sanctions.
Hydra Darknet Market offline after German Police raid
Hydra, the underground platform catering to Russian criminals, is now offline after the raid by German police. Prior to the raid, Hydra used to be the largest darknet market in the world with an annual turnover of $1.35B. The majority of services offered by Hydra including the illicit sale of drugs and money laundering were operating out of russia. Hydra had 17M users and 19K registered seller accounts. According to the investigators, Hydra has cleared over $5B since its launch in 2015.
DDoS attacks on Finland: warning for enterprises
Late last week, Finland’s Ministry of Defense and Foreign Ministry websites were put out of action by a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The attacks occurred while President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed parliament and just hours after the Ministry of Defense had reported a Russian state aircraft had entrained into Finland’s airspace.
Russia’s Sandworm hackers attempted a third blackout in Ukraine
MORE THAN HALF a decade has passed since the notorious Russian hackers known as Sandworm targeted an electrical transmission station north of Kyiv a week before Christmas in 2016, using a unique, automated piece of code to interact directly with the station’s circuit breakers and turn off the lights to a fraction of Ukraine’s capital. That unprecedented specimen of industrial control system malware has never been seen again — until now: In the midst of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, Sandworm appears to be pulling out its old tricks.
