Li JingThe cyberattack on Orbit Bridge just before New Year’s Eve pushed the cumulative crypto losses to almost $100 million in December.
Blockchain security companies reported that the recent assault on Orbit Chain’s cross-chain bridge caused the crypto stolen in December to approach $100 million. On January 1st, PeckShield, a blockchain security firm, revealed that the $81.5 million cross-chain bridge exploit on Orbit Bridge had propelled December into the top five months for hacking incidents in 2023. They also noted that it ranked as the ninth-highest hack targeting a cross-chain bridge over the past three years.
#PeckShieldAlert Hackers stole ~$99.3 million across over 36 attacks in December.
The Cross-chain #OrbitBridge suffered an $81.5 million exploit on New Year鈥檚 Eve, marking it as the 9th top hack targeting a cross-chain bridge in the last 3 years pic.twitter.com/6oGqu7gjLo— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) January 1, 2024
Orbit Bridge, the bridging service for the cross-chain protocol Orbit Chain, was introduced in South Korea back in 2018. However, it faced a major security breach when unauthorized access was detected within its ecosystem on December 31 at 8:52 pm UTC.
In response, the Orbit Chain team took swift action by announcing on January 1 that they had requested major global cryptocurrency exchanges to freeze the stolen assets. They also stated their collaboration with law enforcement agencies to diligently locate and freeze the stolen assets.
Billions in Cryptocurrency Lost to Cyberattacks in 2023
In 2023, the combined losses from cryptocurrency hacks, scams, and exploits were estimated to be in the range of $1.51 billion to $2 billion. These estimates were provided by blockchain security firms PeckShield, CertiK, and Beosin.
Notably, the months of September and November were especially dire, with losses exceeding $700 million during these two months alone, based on data from PeckShield.
We have updated our EOM December stats to reflect the Orbit Chain incident.
December saw a total of $116.5M lost
See more details below pic.twitter.com/I2XS4RtdvL
— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) January 1, 2024
This includes Mixin Network suffering a $200 million loss in September, while the largest breaches in November took place on Poloniex and HTX/Heco Bridge, resulting in losses of $131.4 million and $113.3 million, respectively.
Among other noteworthy incidents in the year, Euler Finance was exploited for $197 million in March, and Multichain was compromised for $125 million in July.
In related news, crypto phishing scams depleted nearly $300 million from 324,000 victims in 2023, as reported.
Notably, blockchain security firm Beosin highlighted significant declines in hacks, phishing scams, and rug pulls compared to 2022, resulting in a total reduction from around $4.38 billion.
The most substantial reduction was observed in hack-related losses, plummeting from $3.6 billion in 2022 to $1.4 billion in 2023, marking a decrease of approximately 61.2%.
Crypto hacks, phishing, and rug pulls in 2023. Source: Beosin