Over the past summer, an anonymous hacker stole approximately €600 million worth of crypto from the Poly Network, a decentralized finance network that many outside of the crypto world have likely never heard of. Surprisingly, a few hours later, the hacker returned everything.
Four months later, hackers stole another €150 million from crypto exchange Bitmart. According to an analysis, the hackers, who were never identified, used a stolen private key to open two digital wallets and extract the funds.
Cryptocurrency heists are increasing exponentially
Security incidents like these are not new to the crypto world, but the size and frequency of these hacks seem to be growing as crypto prices have risen over the past year, attracting more and more attention from cryptocurrencies. cyber criminals.
Five of the 10 largest crypto heists of all time occurred during 2021, with more expected to occur this year and setting new records for amounts stolen. And these incidents can only continue due to the increased use of cryptocurrencies , according to fintech experts. To avoid scares, here we tell you everything you need to know about what is happening and how to keep your digital assets safe.
What’s going on?
The two main targets for hackers are cryptocurrency exchanges and the decentralized finance services (known as DeFi) that operate on them. Centralized exchanges have been the main target of hacking groups for several years. These exchanges store a user’s assets in digital wallets that are connected to the Internet. This makes them much more accessible to users, but also potentially more vulnerable to expert hackers.
The recent BitMart hack was one such example. Another is the attack in 2018, in which approximately 530 million euros were stolen (so far the largest cryptocurrency heist in history). DeFi services are the newest part of the crypto world. DeFi software applications take down all exchanges as they run directly on blockchain platforms, and attacks on these services are usually due to coding errors or issues with application design.
What is clear is that in most of these attacks a vulnerability is often being exploited. With the industry growing at an exponential rate and relying on open source technology , this leaves platforms open to theft when hackers can find a weakness in the code.
What are you really at risk of losing?
The fact that an exchange suffers an attack does not necessarily mean that you lose all your money. Each encryption service has different levels of resources to prevent cyber attacks. Some companies agree to cover all stolen assets. But there is no guarantee of getting it back.
