Crime & Security2 min readThe AssayerLook-back
Q2 2024 in crypto hacks: exchanges took 73.2% of $541.4 million in losses
Losses in the second quarter of 2024 came to $541.4 million across 50 incidents, about level with the $522.7 million of the first quarter. Where the money was lost changed completely. Centralised exchanges had lost $15.1 million in the first three months of the year. In the second quarter they lost $396.2 million across five incidents, 73.2% of the total.
DMM Bitcoin
The largest single loss was DMM Bitcoin, a Japanese exchange that lost about $305 million in bitcoin on May 31, or 48 billion yen. The attackers, linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, compromised an employee, hijacked legitimate transactions and emptied the exchange’s hot wallet. It was 56.3% of the quarter’s losses and ranks 13th of 1,272 incidents in the ledger.
The ledger records the full $305 million as returned or repaid. That figure counts money the exchange’s group put up to cover customers, not funds recovered from the attackers. DMM Bitcoin later closed, and its accounts moved to SBI VC Trade.
Hot wallets again
Two more exchanges lost hot wallets in June. Turkish exchange BtcTurk lost roughly $54 million to $55 million on June 22 after attackers compromised the private keys for 10 hot wallets. Binance froze $5.3 million of the funds. Earlier in the month, Lykke lost about $22.4 million when Lazarus Group compromised its hot wallet, taking 158 BTC and 2,161 ETH. Lykke halted trading and later went bankrupt.
Key compromises and social engineering made up $405.5 million, 74.9% of the quarter’s losses, across nine incidents.
DeFi’s quarter
DeFi protocols had 35 incidents and lost $143.1 million. The largest was Hedgey, which lost about $44.7 million when an attacker used flash loans and missing validation in one of its functions to set up fraudulent approvals. Gala lost $22.3 million after a minter key that had sat unused and unrotated was compromised. The attacker minted about $200 million in GALA, sold it, and returned about $22 million. UwU Lend lost roughly $20 million to price manipulation in June.
Eight incidents of $10 million or more made up 93% of losses. The other 42 incidents shared the rest, and 30 of them were under $1 million each.
Sources
By The Assayer, the Bitminer.io house byline. Written by AI from the sources above and checked automatically. No person reviewed it before publication. How we work.
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