The month of August 2024 has seen a lot of setbacks regarding the crypto space, which saw an increase in crypto loss of around $300.6 million to hackers, fraudsters, and other types of scammers. Certik Alerts has reported this as the second highest monthly loss for the year 2024 after a month that was fraught with so many huge losses.
The majority of what was lost was due to exploits, which amounted to approximately $308.8 million. These incidents are a reminder that threats remain constant in the cryptosphere, with hackers continually discovering and attacking new smart contracts and decentralized platforms.
Additionally, $1.2 million worth of crypto was sucked away by more advanced forms of attacks, such as flash loan attacks. These attacks involve influencing the market by borrowing and repaying quickly, and ultimately causing heavy losses for DeFi protocols.
Pump-and-dump schemes, also known as exit scams, in which developers of such projects run off with investors’ money, also played a role in the losses, although to a small extent: about $0.8 million was reported.
The losses incurred were large, but there was some indication of a recovery aspect of around $10.3 million, which helped cushion the impact. The continued exposure to exploits this month underscores that the crypto space still has weaknesses, particularly in DeFi.
Hackings were among the most significant events that occurred in August and two of them were significant. The Ronin Network hack that took place, where over $9.8 million was stolen, and the Nexera exploit that caused traders to lose $1.5 million.
Both issues arose from newly developed vulnerabilities related to code updates, which highlighted the need for a high level of security when implementing code changes or optimizations.
The number of incidents has decreased slightly compared to previous months, but the resulting losses remain quite significant. This continued pattern of large-scale losses shows that the crypto industry is still the prime target for malicious actors, and DeFi protocols are one of the areas most exposed to them.
In the future, it is important to pay more attention to the threats in the atmosphere and take stricter safety measures to prevent similar problems and protect investors’ funds.
