Hackers more than doubled their cryptocurrency holdings in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period a year ago, according to a report by blockchain research firm TRM Labs.
It says hackers stole $1.38 billion worth of cryptocurrencies between January 1 and June 24. dollars, or more than twice as much as 657 million USD during the same period a year ago. As in the past year, several major attacks led to a rise in stolen cryptocurrencies, with the top five hacks accounting for 70 percent of the amounts stolen in the first half of the year.
TRM Labs said the most popular attack vectors in 2024 are private key and passphrase compromises. A seed phrase is a sequence of random words that stores the information needed to access or restore a cryptocurrency wallet.
The largest heist of the year so far from Japanese cryptocurrency exchange DMM Bitcoin has resulted in over $300 million worth of bitcoins.
Hackers have used stolen private keys or address spoofing, where attackers send a small amount of cryptocurrency from a wallet to a look-alike address designed to mimic yours or your recipient's, in order to trick the victim into transferring funds to the wrong wallet.
