Crypto Hack Incidents Cause Damage Over $300 Million in August

Key Points:

• The crypto sector lost around $300.6 million in August 2024 due to crypto hack incidents, with $10.3 million recovered.
• The Ronin Network suffered a significant attack, losing nearly $10 million worth of ETH due to a faulty upgrade deployment script.

According to CertiK Alert, the estimated losses in the cryptocurrency industry reached about $300.6 million in August 2024.

Read more: $1.38 Billion Lost in First Half 2024 Crypto Hacks: Report

$300 Million Loss in August Due to Crypto Hack Incidents

All these losses occurred because of a suite of vulnerabilities, hacker attacks, and scams. This is the second-highest on record so far this year. Fortunately, about $10.3 million has been recovered.

Of these, the biggest chunk was contributed by contract vulnerabilities at approximately $308.8 million. Crypto hacks and exploits are surely not going to go away anytime soon, especially with the DeFi sector continuing to take center stage in being the favorite playground for cybercriminals. Shockingly, no attack has been reported against centralized finance companies in 2024.

Among the crypto hack incidents that happened in August, Ronin Network is the highlight, which is considered the leading blockchain in gaming. A white hat hacker hacked the network and took 3,996 ETH, about $10 million at that time. This was on August 6th to have related with a faulty deployment script of the upgrade that had compromised the Ronin bridge.

Year-to-Date Crypto Losses Reach $1.21 Billion

Further insight from an Immunefi Crypto Losses report in August 2024 shows that the security challenges persist. It was indicated in the report that total losses due to hacks and scams in 2024 stood at $1.21 billion from 154 crypto hack incidents, up by 15.5% from the same period in 2023.

August, however, witnessed some interesting decline in the month-to-month losses: only $15.1 million lost in five crypto hack incidents, a fall by 38% from August 2023 and 94.5% compared to the previous month.