Losses from the attacks on Poloniex, HTX and Heco Bridge accounted for almost 70% of all the losses in crypto hacks that were registered in November.
The blockchain industry faced a turbulent November in 2023, marked by a staggering 47 crypto exploits and breaches that resulted in a cumulative loss of around $349 million, according to insights from the SlowMist Blockchain Hacked Archive.
Popular Crypto Exploits that Made Headlines
Let’s consider the major crypto hacks that were registered in the previous month.
Onyx Protocol – $2.1M
On November 1, 2023, Onyx Protocol, a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) lending protocol, fell victim to an attack resulting in a loss of 1,164.53 ETH (about $2.1 million). The attacker manipulated interest rates to borrow more funds than expected, employing similar tactics seen in the attack on Hundred Finance.
TrustPad – $155,000
On November 6, 2023, TrustPad, a cross-chain financing platform, suffered a loss of about $155,000 due to a staking contract attack. This is one of the smallest crypto exploits recorded in November.
TheStandard.io – $290,000
TheStandard.io, a decentralized stablecoin protocol, experienced an attack on November 7, resulting in a loss of approximately $290,000. Exploiting low liquidity in the PAXG pool, the attacker was able to successfully manipulate the market.
MEV Bot – $2.2M
On the same day, an MEV bot suffered an attack, losing about 1,000 ETH. The attacker exploited the lack of authentication in the contract’s 0xf6ebebbb function, using it to trigger arbitrage and profit from token exchanges.
CoinSpot – $2.4M
Suspected to be due to a private key leak, the Australian crypto exchange CoinSpot experienced a loss of over 1,283 ETH (approximately $2.472 million) on November 8, 2023.
Poloniex – $130M
On November 10, the exchange Poloniex suffered a massive attack, causing an estimated loss of about $130 million. Poloniex is a high profile exchange connected to the Justin Sun crypto empire. The protocol unveiled recently that it plans to resume withdrawals after some security measures were put in place.
Raft Protocol – $6.7M
The Raft Protocol, a stablecoin platform on Ethereum, fell victim to an attack on November 11, resulting in the minting of 6.7 million R stablecoins and a loss of about $3.3 million in ETH. The attack exposed a precision calculation issue during the minting of share tokens.
Exzo Network – $526,000
On November 14, Exzo Network faced an exploit worth $526,000 due to a compromised administrator account, resulting in the attacker minting a large amount of XZO and withdrawing funds from the liquidity pool.
dYdX – $9M
The dYdX v3 insurance fund suffered a crypto exploit valued at about $9 million on November 18 due to YFI liquidations, with the CEO suggesting it was a targeted attack.
Kronos Research – $26M
On November 19, the crypto quantitative trading firm Kronos Research reported unauthorized access to some API keys, resulting in a loss of 13,007 ETH, approximately worth $26 million. In an attempt to retrieve part of the stolen funds, Kronos promised to give the hacker $2.5 million.
HTX, Heco Bridge – $113.3M
On November 22, the HTX (formerly Huobi) hot wallet and the Heco cross-chain bridge were attacked, resulting in a substantial loss of $113.3 million. Notably, attacks on Poloniex, HTX, and Heco Bridge contributed to 69% of total losses in November.
Kyber Network – $54.7M
The next day, Kyber Network’s KyberSwap Elastic suffered an attack resulting in a loss of about $54.7 million. Excitingly, about $5.7 million has been recovered by the KyberSwap team with affected users set to be repaid from the protocol’s Treasury Pool.
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