As a seasoned researcher who has witnessed the rollercoaster ride that is the crypto space, I find myself both astounded and disheartened by the October 2024 hacking incidents. With over $88 million in losses due to approximately 20 breaches, it’s a stark reminder of the inherent risks in this rapidly evolving industry.


In October 2024, it’s reported by cybersecurity company PeckShieldAlert that the crypto market experienced nearly 20 hacking events, resulting in a combined loss of approximately $88.47 million.

Approximately five major incidents resulted in the majority of the total losses, with Radiant Capital suffering the biggest financial impact among them all.

The Top October Crypto Hacks

In October, one of the major events that occurred was the Radiant Capital hack, during which vast amounts of cryptocurrency were transferred to Ethereum. Furthermore, it’s believed that a wallet linked to the U.S. government suffered a breach, leading to a $20 million loss.

On October 17th, an incident known as The Radiant Capital episode occurred. This event saw Ancilia Inc., a blockchain security firm, flag potential suspicious activity within the smart contract on the BNB Chain. Various on-chain security experts offered various predictions about the damage, but Spot on Chain ultimately concluded that the total loss was approximately $53 million.

In the course of this year, our platform has experienced two security incidents. The first one occurred back in January 2024, where we incurred a substantial loss of approximately $4.5 million as a result of a specific weakness found in our smart contract system.

On October 24, CryptoPotato reported an instance where crooks possibly linked to the U.S. government’s cryptocurrency wallet had a security breach. This wallet contained funds seized after the 2016 Bitfinex hack, and a total of $20 million was taken from it. Surprisingly, the unidentified hacker then sent back approximately $19.3 million to the compromised wallet.

Arkham Intelligence tracked the transactions of the funds to an address starting with “0x348,” where digital currencies like USD Coins (USDC), Tethers (USDT), and Ethereum (ETH) were held.

In the instance of EigenLayer, approximately $5.7 million was initially taken and later disguised as legitimate transactions via the HitBTC and Bybit digital asset exchanges. This theft was orchestrated on October 4, following which the project’s team disclosed they were looking into suspicious transactions originating from a now-identified wallet address that had been conducting unauthorized sales activity.

More Incidents

Away from here, a decentralized finance system on the BNB Chain known as the Tapioca Foundation experienced a theft of $4.7 million due to a social engineering attack. In this instance, the hackers exploited a compromised digital key to take control over the project’s token vesting agreement, enabling them to produce an unlimited quantity of USDO tokens.

Initially, someone emptied about $3 million from the USDO/USDC pool on Uniswap. Later, after identifying and addressing the vulnerability, the foundation managed to retrieve around 1,000 Ether, which was worth more than $2.7 million at that time.

As a researcher, I recently came across an incident involving Sunray Finance, a decentralized protocol. Regrettably, a malicious smart contract on the Arbitrum network was manipulated in a single transaction, resulting in a theft of approximately $2.86 million from the platform. The culprit employed the Across bridge to initially fund their wallet and subsequently minted 200 trillion SUN tokens, which they swapped for USDT. This action led to an instantaneous collapse of the SUN token’s value down to zero.

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2024-11-02 01:30