The recent attack on Orbit Chain’s cross-chain bridge has pushed up the amount of crypto stolen in December to almost $100 million, according to blockchain security firms.
On Jan. 1, blockchain security firm PeckShield said the $81.5 million cross-chain bridge exploit on Orbit Bridge meant that December w the fifth-highest month for hacks in 2023.
The exploit was also ninth-highest hack targeting a cross-chain bridge over the past three years, it said.
#PeckShieldAlert Hackers stole ~$99.3 million across over 36 attacks in December.
The Cross-chain #OrbitBridge suffered an $81.5 million exploit on New Year’s Eve, marking it as the 9th top hack targeting a cross-chain bridge in the last 3 years pic.twitter.com/6oGqu7gjLo
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) January 1, 2024
Orbit Bridge is the bridging service of the cross-chain protocol Orbit Chain, launched in South Korea in 2018, which lateconfirmed it was hacked due to an unauthorized breach of access to its ecosystem on Dec. 31 at 8:52 pm UTC.
On Jan. 1, the Orbit Chain team announced it had requested major global cryptocurrency exchanges freeze the stolen assets.
“We are in close contact with law enforcement agencies, and we are working diligently to track down and freeze the assets that have been stolen,” it added.
Billions lost to hackers in 2023
The total crypto losses due to hacks, scams, and exploits throughout 2023 ranged between $1.51 billion and $2 billion, according to estimates from blockchain security firms PeckShield, CertiK, and Beosin.
September and November were particularly devastating, with over $700 million lost during those two months alone, according to PeckShield data.
#CertiKStatsAlert
We have updated our EOM December stats to reflect the Orbit Chain incident.
December saw a total of $116.5M lost
See more details below pic.twitter.com/I2XS4RtdvL
— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) January 1, 2024
This included the Mixin Network losing $200 million in September, while the largest exploits in November occurred on Poloniex and HTX/Heco Bridge, with losses of $131.4 million and $113.3 million, respectively.
Other notable hacks in the year included Euler Finance being exploited for $197 million in March and Multichain being hacked for $125 million in July.
Related: Crypto phishing scams took almost $300M from 324K victims in 2023: Report
Blockchain security firm Beosin however noted that hacks, phishing scams, and rug pulls all saw significant declines compared to 2022, with total losses down from roughly $4.38 billion.
Losses from hacks saw the biggest drop, from $3.6 billion in 2022 to $1.4 billion in 2023, a decrease of about 61.2%, it noted.
Crypto hacks, phishing, and rug pulls in 2023. Source: BeosinMagazine: DeFi’s billion-dollar secret: The insiders responsible for hacks
