Web3 space lost $ 1.48 billion in various scams and attacks between January and May 2022, with only four incidents accounting for 81% of that number these days. study By a cyber security company Hacken clearly.
A total of 87 hacks, exploits and scams were recorded from January to May. According to the survey, four super hacks account for $ 1.2 billion, which is 81.3% of the total stolen amount.
Super hack
The Ronin Network, Solana Wormhole, Beanstalk, and Qubit financial cases are four super hacks that account for $ 1.2 billion.
The Qubit Finance hack occurred in January 2022. An attacker exploited a protocol vulnerability to care about xETH without depositing WETH. As a result, the protocol lost 206.809 BNB. That’s $ 80 million.
The following month, Solana’s Wormhole Bridge was abused. An attacker was able to transfer 80,000 ETH through a wormhole in a single transaction. That amount was worth more than $ 326 million at the time.
In March, Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network hack appeared in the headlines. The attacker managed to gain control of four Ronin Network validators and steal 173,000 ETH from the protocol. At that time, it was about $ 615 million, and the Ronin hack was the most costly of all four super hacks in 2022.
Finally, a flash loan for the DeFi protocol Beanstalk was attacked in April. The attacker earned $ 80 million, but the protocol lost more than $ 180 million.
Increased attacks
The report begins in 2012 and looks at attacks until May 2022. The numbers show that the amount lost by cyber attacks has increased exponentially, especially over the last two years.
Between 2012 and 2019, web3 lost about $ 700 million, with a 0.2% recovery rate of $ 2 million.
From January 2020 to the end of the year, total loss from cyber attacks increased to $ 300 million. It’s an incredible surge in a year, but 18% of the money has been recovered to about $ 55 million.
Throughout 2021, losses were even higher. From January to December 2021, a cyberattack stole a total of $ 2.3 billion. Despite the amount of money stolen, the recovery rate has increased to 28%, worth $ 652 million.
Delayed recovery rate in 2022
Another result pointed out by the report was a feared decline in recovery rates.
Between 2012 and 2019, there was little recovery rate. This is partly due to low awareness of cyberattacks and insufficient expertise in this area.
As cybersecurity experts deepened their knowledge of blockchain technology, the recovery rate increased to about 20% in 2020. But in 2022 it couldn’t keep up with the same performance.
Of the total loss of $ 1.478 billion, only 4.5% was recovered, the report notes, which is equivalent to $ 68 million. The report states:
“In 2022, the Web 3.0 project lost more money on hacking, fraud, and exploits than it did in 2012-2019. Perhaps the most disturbing is the recovery rate of only 4.5%. That’s far from the 28% in 2021, and this recovery rate shows the complexity of hacking and fraud. “
