Top 5 biggest cryptocurrency hacks in 2021

2021 has seen a tremendous degree of acceptance and interest in the cryptocurrency business, resulting in a growth in the creation and investment in DeFi systems. Following the surge in interest, the cryptocurrency market’s total value locked (TVL) surpassed $230 billion. However, hackers are catching this and are launching more sophisticated attacks on unregulated DeFi systems.

Here are the top 5 biggest cryptocurrency hacks in 2021:

1. Poly Network – $611m

The August Poly Network attack was the largest cryptocurrency attack ever!

More than $600 million in assets were stolen from the multi-chain system, including $264 million from Ethereum wallets, $250 million from Binance Smart Chain wallets, and $85 million from Polygon.

Following the theft, the cryptocurrency industry worked together to prevent the hacker from using and ‘laundering’ the assets.

The hacker then opted to repay $260 million in stolen cash after being ‘hunted’ by numerous security organizations such as Slowmist and Chainalysis.

2. BitMart – $196m

In December, a total of $196 million in cryptocurrency were taken from two of the BitMart platform’s ‘hot wallets’ on Ethereum and BSC.  The assets taken from the wallets mostly consisted of’memecoins’ such as SHIB, as well as a range other BSC-based tokens with comparable functionality.

Following the incident, rumors spread across the platform’s Telegram channel, where they were disregarded as ‘fake news.’

Following a thorough investigation, BitMart CEO Sheldon Xia revealed that a “large-scale security breach” had happened and that monies had been taken. Little is known about the exploit’s origins.

3. Cream Finance – $148m

Cream Finance, a DeFi platform, was hacked twice in 2021, once for $18 million in August and again for $130 million in October.

The first saw $18 million in ETH stolen as a result of a smart contract flaw, before the second hacker was able to regularly lend and borrow cash across many wallets via ‘flash loans.’

The hacker was able to escape with a significant quantity of assets, including 2,760 ETH, 76 BTC, and more over $10 million in stablecoins.

4. Vulcan Forged – $140m

Vulcan Forged, a play-to-earn NFT game, had $140 million in PYR tokens stolen from hacked wallets in December.  The majority of the assets were stolen from customers’ wallets, which were linked to Venly, an integrated wallet service.

The hack compromised the ‘private keys’ of 96 addresses, allowing the attacker to drain the contents of their wallets, which included large sums of ETH and MATIC.

The team repaid users from their treasury following the hack.

5. Badger Finance – $120m

The last breach on the list happened in December, when BadgerDAO was subjected to a ‘front-end’ assault that resulted in the theft of more than $120 million in ETH and BTC from the site.

Using contract ‘approvals,’ which allow the smart contract to interact with the funds in a wallet, the hacker was able to ‘insert’ new approvals and secretly move user funds to their own wallet.

Following the disclosure of the vulnerability, the Badger team said that it has suspended all smart contracts in order to conduct additional investigation.

Patrick

Coincu News