In July 2024, the crypto sector was rocked by losses totaling nearly $269.5 million due to 14 specific hacking incidents. Security and bug bounty platform Immunefi reported this data in its latest report.
Surprisingly, a single incident of such magnitude caused centralized finance (CeFi) to surpass decentralized finance (DeFi) in terms of lost value.
Hacks continue to dominate the crypto sector
Immunefi’s report found that July saw $269,439,252 in theft across fourteen specific attacks and fraud incidents. This represents a 90% increase over the previous month and a 15.9% decrease compared to July 2023. During this period, losses recorded reached $320,498,660.
The bulk of this amount came from just two projects. Indian exchange WazirX lost $235 million in a hack, while LI.FI protocol, a swap and bridge platform between major blockchains and protocols, suffered a security breach that cost it $10 million.
Hacks were still the leading cause of losses in July, with $266,481,700 stolen across 12 incidents, while fraudsters took $2,957,552 across two incidents. Fraud thus accounted for just 1.1% of total losses in the month, while hacks accounted for 98.9%.
Centralized finance and North Korean hackers in focus
Furthermore, Immunefi found that CeFi once again outperformed DeFi in July. DeFi suffered a total of $34,439,252 in losses in July, spread across eleven incidents. However, CeFi accounted for 87% of the total volume of funds lost. That was $235,000,000 in a single incident.
“The largest volume of losses in 2024 is attributed to attacks targeting CeFi infrastructure,” the report highlighted.
Over $636 million of the $1.19 billion stolen in 2024 to date is attributed to CeFi. Additionally, the infamous North Korean group Lazarus has made a significant comeback. It appears that this group is behind the WazirX hack.
Additionally, the DMM Bitcoin hack in May has also been linked to the Lazarus group, with the hackers beginning to launder the funds in July.
Overall, the Lazarus group — affiliated with the North Korean government — has been linked to some of the largest attacks within the crypto ecosystem , the report said. Some of these include Atomic Wallet, CoinEx, Alphapo, Stake and CoinsPaid.
Main targets: Ethereum and BNB Chain
It’s no surprise that Ethereum and BNB Chain were the most targeted networks in July. Surprisingly, these two networks accounted for 71.4% of the total losses on the attacked chains.
Ethereum suffered the most individual attacks, with seven incidents accounting for 50% of the total losses on the attacked chains. Meanwhile, BNB Chain suffered three incidents, accounting for 21.4% of the losses.
Scroll and Base each suffered one incident, accounting for 7.1% of the total losses. Meanwhile, Immunefi has over $157 million in bug bounties available.
So far, the platform has paid out more than $100 million in total rewards, while saving more than $25 billion in user funds, according to the team.
