- Elliptic, a blockchain analytics organization, released a report concerning NFT thefts.
- Hackers attacked the Ronin Bridge in 2021 to wipe out 540 Million USD.
- The report suggests that attackers stole around 12 Billion USD worth of digital assets last year.
A Year of Frauds
According to the report issued by Elliptic, a blockchain analytics company, the hackers wiped out 12 Billion USD worth of NFTs in 2021, a painful loss for the struggling Decentralized Finance (DeFi) sector to increase their cybersecurity. The organization highlighted the trends including NFT frauds, from manipulating the value and money laundering to DeFi attacks across the globe.
The report, titled ‘NFT Report 2022’, issued on August 26 2022 highlights the risk related to the DeFi sector and recommends that folks should be cautious about the cryptocurrency transactions.
Attack on Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge, where Korean hackers attacked the ecosystem and vanished with nearly 540 Million USD worth of cryptocurrency. This event went on to become the second biggest hack with respect to the value. Total TVL in the DeFi sector was 247 Billion USD back in November 2021.
The sector lost 260 Million USD from private key thefts in NFT and DeFi protocols. Decentralized Finance platforms still offer specific rights to devs to amend their smart contract codes to make sure that the loopholes are patched effectively without waiting for the consensus validation by users, said the report. Hackers take advantage of such developer privileges to execute fraudulent transactions.
The document says that attackers got the private keys of devs via ‘social engineering efforts’ where they developers unintentionally gave up their keys to the hackers. As an element of this modus operandi, the bad actors used social media to contact them and were lured into the traps to get their wallets ripped.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/09/01/elliptic-reports-12-billion-usd-lost-in-nft-thefts-in-2021/