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ccording to blockchain security firm PeckShield, the amount of money netted from decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks in the first four months of 2022, $1.57 billion, has already surpassed the amount netted in all of 2021, $1.55 billion. Chainalysis found a similar trend, with the hacker haul in the first three months of 2022 exceeding a record set in the third quarter of 2021. The biggest hacks were Axie Infinity's Ronin bridge exploit ($650 million), the Wormhole network exploit ($320 million) and the Beanstalk Farms governance attack ($180 million). The biggest hacks of 2022 were carried out by attackers spotting vulnerabilities in smart contracts and protocols, especially in cross-chain bridges and flash loan protocols. According to Chainalysis, because blockchain code is typically public, hackers can view it easily to spot vulnerabilities and manipulate the protocol to exploit it.

The U.S. Department of Justice arrested three individuals associated with the July 15 Twitter hack. The hack hijacked the accounts of some of Twitter's most prominent users and sent tweets promising followers who sent Bitcoin to a specific address that their contribution would be paid back double. Authorities said Friday that the attackers used three different Bitcoin wallets to collect their proceeds, receiving more than 400 deposits worth $117,457.58. Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis played a key role in the investigation, bringing into question exactly how anonymous are bitcoin transactions. "If [the accused] had carried out these transactions in fiat currency, the investigation may have been more difficult, as the transactions wouldn't have left the same public footprint that Bitcoin transactions do." https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/three-individuals-charged-alleged-roles-twitter-hack

Crypto exchange ZB Exchange has paused user withdrawals, likely in response to a suspected hack that appears to have drained nearly $5 million in tokens from the firm's hot wallet. The multimillion-dollar loss is the latest in a series of security breaches to hit crypto companies this year and the third multimillion-dollar hack reported this week.

As least 75 crypto exchanges have closed down due hacks, scams or simply disappeared for unknown reasons so far this year. According to the Crypto Wisser Exchange Graveyard five of the exchanges were labelled as scams, and four including Altsbit, and Nerae, were flagged as being hacked. In total 31 were shut down voluntarily while 34 were labeled as 'MIA' for disappearing with no explanation. The growth of DeFi and the rise of decentralized exchanges in 2020, increasing regulatory pressures, and hacks and scams were cited as factors.

A major hack that compromised Uganda's mobile money network has plunged the country's telecoms and banking sectors into crisis. The October 3 hack was a result of a security breach on a consumer finance aggregator, Pegasus Technologies, which mainly affected bank to mobile wallet transfers. At least $3.2 million is estimated to have been stolen. The hackers used around 2,000 mobile SIM cards to gain access to the mobile money payment system. They then instructed the banks to transfer millions of dollars to telecommunication companies who then paid out mobile money to these different SIM cards across the country.

KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu tweeted that the South Korean crypto exchange has found what he described as "suspects" of last September's hack that resulted in the theft of $281 million in cryptocurrencies. Also, another $64 million of stolen assets have been recovered from "suspicious addresses," bringing the total value of recovered assets to $204 million since the October 1 hack.

DeFi protocol Cream Finance suffered yet another hack this year after an exploit stole at least $130 million in what could be one of the largest thefts in decentralized finance. Cream was involved in similar attacks that stole nearly $38 million in February and almost $19 million in August. Meanwhile, a hacker stole $600 million worth of crypto tokens from the PolyNetwork protocol in August in what is considered to be the largest DeFi hack ever.

Ilya Lichtenstein and his rapper wife, Heather Morgan, were arrested in New York for allegedly trying to launder Bitcoin that was stolen during the 2016 hack of Bitfinex, and the Justice Department has seized more than $3.6 billion of the $4.5 billion of the stolen bitcoin. David Gerard covers this story in detail, with an eye towards assessing whether the two alleged money launderers could have been responsible for the Bitfinex hack, concluding that they have the minimal skills needed.

When cryptoasset exchanges get hacked and large monetary amounts get stolen, news tends to spread fairly quickly. However, articles tend to focus largely on the monetary amount stolen. Rarely do they explore the deeper consequences and fallout resulting from these shocks. In this feature, Coinmetrics use both on-chain and market data to analyze four of the largest Bitcoin exchange hacks and look at the deep consequences of each, both positive and negative.

"Singapore-based exchange DragonEx says it has been hacked for an undisclosed amount in a number of cryptocurrencies."

Two cryptocurrency exchange portals, DragonEx and CoinBene, have disclosed hacks this week and have both gone into maintenance mode to investigate and improve their infrastructure. DragonEx is believed to have lost over $1 million worth of cryptocurrency, while CoinBebe's losses are estimated at over $45 million, according to industry observers

Binance decided against responding to the hack with a rollback: i.e. aiming to incentivize miners to form a consensus to wield 51% of the network's hashing power to reorganize the blockchain's transactions after the loss.

Japanese crypto exchange Bitpoint has suspended all services after losing $32 million in a hack involving XRP, Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies.

Japanese exchange Liquid has been hacked, with about $80 million in digital assets moved off the platform. The exchange confirmed the security breach in a Thursday tweet, with Liquid revealing the wallet addresses implicated in the breach. The exchange noted that only its warm wallets were affected, adding that its assets are currently being moved into cold storage.

Certik reported that the amount of money lost in decentralized financed (DeFi) project hacks more than doubled to $1.3 billion in 2021, with centralization the most common vulnerability. According to DefiLlama data, the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols at end-2021 was $243.88 billion, up from $18.29 billion the year before, meaning the lost funds shrank to 0.5% of TVL last year from 2.78% in 2020.

Chainalysis says cross-chain bridges that allow transfer of assets between independent blockchains are among the highest risk protocols in the blockchain industry for scams and bad actors. Chainalysis in a new report estimates that $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen from cross-chain bridges across 13 attacks so far this year, accounting for 69% of all stolen funds during that time. Cross-chain bridges were once considered the solution to interoperability between blockchains in the crypto industry, but as the protocols continue to seem vulnerable to hacks and attacks that view is beginning to change.

"The attacker of the $611 million Poly Network exploit has started returning the stolen crypto assets, less than a day after their ID information was reportedly obtained by blockchain security firm Slowmist. The attacker's move came less than a day after the initial exploit, which was the largest DeFi hack to date. But hours after the heist, blockchain security firm Slowmist claimed that they already tracked down the attacker's IP and email information while the investigation on other ID intel relating to the attacker continued."

"Today, Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather "Razzlekhan" Morgan pled guilty to money laundering charges related to their role in laundering over 120,000 Bitcoin stolen from the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex in 2016. In addition to admitting to the laundering today, Lichtenstein also admitted to executing the hack on the exchange. This is the first time Lichtenstein has been publicly identified as the hacker. No sentencing date was set at the plea hearing due to the ongoing cooperation of the couple."

Crypto exchange Binance temporarily suspended its blockchain network after hackers made off with around $570 million worth of its BNB token. According to Binance,  cross-chain bridge linking with its BNB Chain was targeted, enabling hackers to move BNB tokens off the network. Cross-chain bridges are tools that allow the transfer of tokens from one blockchain to another. The company said it had worked with network validators to pause creation of new blocks on BSC, suspending all transaction processing while a team of developers investigates the breach.

"More than 2,100 computers around the world were infected over the weekend with ransomware that exploited a two-year-old vulnerability in server software made by VMware Inc., according to cybersecurity researchers and authorities."