And most of these illicit gains were generated from a single incident, after sophisticated social engineering tactics were used to steal 3,520 BTC from a wallet.
According to on-chain investigator ZachXBT, the funds were quickly laundered through at least six instant exchanges and swapped for Monero, causing XMR's price to surge by 50%.
On Wednesday, ZachXBT confirmed that the victim was "an elderly individual in the U.S." who had held onto the crypto since 2017.
Update: It is confirmed to be a social engineering theft from an elderly individual in the US.
Other notable incidents across April included a $7.5 million attack on the decentralized exchange KiloEX, which was linked to a "price oracle exploit."
A further $5.8 million was stolen from Loopscale, with over $5 million drained from an airdrop contract belonging to Ethereum scaling protocol ZKsync.
According to CertiK, all three of these crypto platforms have managed to recoup funds from white-hat hackers.
April's data is a marked jump from the $28.8 million in losses confirmed in March. But it pales in comparison to the record-breaking $1.5 billion stolen in February, when Bybit was targeted in an audacious hack by North Korean hacking outfit Lazarus Group.
A hacker who drained nearly $5 million from Ethereum scaling protocol ZKsync’s airdrop contract has returned the stolen funds within the project’s 72-hour deadline, closing the chapter on the recent exploit.
“We’re pleased to share that the hacker has cooperated and returned the funds within the safe harbor deadline,” ZKsync posted on X, formerly Twitter. “The case is now considered resolved.”
The recovered assets, consisting of over 44.6 million ZK tokens and nearly 1,800 ETH, are now under the...
CertiK's findings come days after its co-founder Ronghui Gu warned that the security challenges facing blockchain remain "severe," despite this technology becoming "critical global financial infrastructure" in recent years.
He noted that $1.67 billion was stolen by malicious actors between January and March—a quarter-on-quarter increase of 303%—with most attacks targeting the Ethereum ecosystem.
The cyber security firm says phishing attacks are still on the rise, meaning crypto businesses and investors must take extra care in verifying whether URLs and smart contracts are authentic before transfers are made.
Other top tips include utilizing cold storage that's disconnected from the internet, and not sharing information about crypto holdings on social media.
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The Bank of Korea is considering linking its deposit tokens to a public blockchain, a move that would position its state-backed digital currency alongside private-sector stablecoins operating on open networks.
The tokens will be “a type of stablecoin issued within the digital currency system built and operated by the Bank of Korea,” the bank’s Deputy Governor Lee Jong-ryeol said in a statement Decrypt has confirmed with local sources.
"We are considering a direction in which it will coexist with...
Professor Andrew Urquhart is Professor of Finance and Financial Technology and Head of the Department of Finance at Birmingham Business School (BBS).
This is the sixth instalment of the Professor Coin column, in which I bring important insights from published academic literature on cryptocurrencies to the Decrypt readership. In this article, we’ll investigate cryptocurrency derivatives.
Bitcoin has gone from being an obscure digital asset traded by blockchain enthusiasts to one of the most trade...
Bitcoin (BTC) may be gaining momentum globally, but in Australia, it’s also attracting political ire.
On May 23, Senator Gerard Rennick dismissed Bitcoin as a “Ponzi scheme,” sparking immediate backlash from crypto industry groups and users alike.
“Bitcoin will ultimately go to a $1 million dollars. Why? Because it’s a Ponzi scheme whereby BlackRock will pump more and more dollars into a supply-constrained product,” Rennick tweeted in response to a user who sarcastically asked for his “special c...