While it is true that there were a couple of cyber thefts in the crypto industry during the course of 2022, the month of December last year saw the least amount of crypto theft; specifically with a total loss of $62.2 million from 23 major attacks.
Leading blockchain audit company, CertiK announced on Twitter that the top exit scams in the month of December were approximately $15.5 million while Flashloans attacks recorded $7.6 million.
#CertiKStatsAlert 🚨
Combining all the incidents in December we’ve confirmed ~$62.2M lost to exploits, hacks and scams.
The lowest monthly figure this year.
Exit scams were ~$15.5M
Flashloans were ~$7.6M
See the details below 👇 pic.twitter.com/1ub3mYVv6K
— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) December 31, 2022
The security firm advised crypto users to ensure they carry out proper due diligence and find out if a project has KYC and an audit report before investing.
Flash loans are a type of financial transaction that allows a borrower to quickly obtain a large amount of capital and then repay it immediately. Flash loans have, however, been exploited in several ways, including the use of vulnerable smart contracts. Malicious actors can exploit these flaws to carry out transactions that result in the theft of funds.
Another way that flash loans have been exploited is through the use of complex financial transactions that rely on the assumption that certain market conditions will remain stable. If those conditions change, the transaction may result in a loss for the borrower.
Some Crypto Thefts in 2022
The cyber hack that occurred in the defunct FTX exchange is a major attack in the crypto space. The hacker was reported to have stolen $372 million following the abrupt collapse of the firm. It is still not certain whether the hack was done by an FTX employee or an outsider. However, it was reported that the US authorities have frozen a sizable amount of the stolen assets.
Ankr, a decentralized finance protocol built on Ethereum, confirmed in December that it was affected by a multi-million dollar cyberattack. PeckShield announced on Twitter that the hacker had stolen funds to Tornado cash or bridged them through Celer or deBridgeGate to Ethereum.
#PeckShieldAlert Seems like @ankr has been exploited, $aBNBc has dropped -50%, tons of $aBNBc have minted to https://t.co/nyfwdd6fWI
and the exploiter transferred some of the stolen funds to Tornado cash or bridged them via celer and deBridgeGate to Ethereum @peckshield pic.twitter.com/vK94dIEWIt— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) December 2, 2022
Ankr later confirmed on Twitter that the aBNB token has been hacked and that it is working with exchanges to immediately halt trading of the hacked token.
The month of December also experienced another cyberattack with Defrost Finance announcing that its V2 suffered a hack with an attacker withdrawing funds via the flash loan function. The firm however said it was closing the V2 UI adding that V1 was not harmed.
Defrost Finance is sad to announce that our V2 has suffered a hack, with an attacker using a flash loan function to withdraw funds.
The V1 is not affected. We will soon close the V2 UI and investigate further with our tech team.
Updates will be posted on our official channels.
— Defrost Finance 🔺 (@Defrost_Finance) December 24, 2022
