In the latter months of 2024, losses from cryptocurrency scams, hacks, and exploits have notably declined. December emerged as the month with the least amount of hacking incidents throughout the entire year, with reported losses amounting to $28.6 million. This marks a substantial decrease from the losses recorded in preceding months, with November seeing $63.8 million and October peaking at $115.8 million.
The majority of December’s losses were attributed to exploits, with criminal activities resulting in $26.7 million taken from various platforms. Among the most significant security breaches was a $2.1 million exploit affecting the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform GemPad, where an attacker exploited a weakness in the platform’s smart contracts to siphon assets. Another noteworthy incident involved a hacker targeting the token bridge of the DeFi project FEG, resulting in a loss of $1 million through an exploit that allowed for the withdrawal of tokens without proper deposits.
Compounding the analysis, another blockchain security firm recorded hack losses of $24.7 million in December, a stark 71% reduction compared to the preceding month. Among over 25 incidents tracked, the most noteworthy was an exploit impacting the password management service LastPass, wherein hackers drained $12.3 million in cryptocurrency. This breach followed a data compromise in December 2022, which had already set off a wave of crypto theft estimated to exceed $35 million affecting approximately 150 users.
In broader trends, a recent security report indicated that throughout 2024, approximately $2.3 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen across 165 separate incidents. This figure represents a striking 40% increase from the previous year’s thefts of $1.69 billion, although it remains 37% lower than the $3.78 billion stolen in 2022. Experts suggest that the uptick in thefts in 2024 may be linked to increased breaches in access controls, particularly within centralized exchanges and cryptocurrency custodians.
