The crypto industry has faced persistent challenges, particularly due to hacks and protocol exploits over the years. On a positive note, the volume of hacks decreased by more than 50% compared to the previous year. [2022].
According to TRM Labs, hackers stole approximately $1.7 billion in cryptocurrency funds in 2023, a significant drop from the $4 billion recorded in 2022. Despite the overall decline in losses, projects Individuals still suffered substantial thefts of large sums of money.
Throughout the year, several notable hacking incidents attracted attention and affected prominent entities such as Multichain, Euler Finance, Mixin Network, and Atomic Wallet.
In this article we explore the top 10 cryptocurrency thefts of 2023 by delving into the projects affected and analyzing the factors that contributed to each of these attacks.
1.) Mixin Network: $200 million
Mixin Network, a Hong Kong-based crypto project, experienced the biggest cryptocurrency exploit of the year. [2023].
In September 2023, the company had to abruptly stop its operations when hackers managed to steal $200 million from users' hot wallets.
According to Mixin, hackers attacked the database of its cloud service provider. Although the company did not offer additional details, analysts speculate that the compromised database could have contained the private keys to users' accounts – the sensitive phrases used to access their cryptocurrency holdings.
2.) Euler Finance: $195 million
The urgent lending attack on Euler Finance in March 2023 caused losses exceeding $195 million and triggered a contagion effect across several decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. In addition to Euler, at least 11 other protocols suffered losses due to the attack.
In a surprising turn of events, the attacker returned all exploited funds over the next 23 days. This came as a considerable relief to many Euler users who had been affected by the initial attack.
3.) MultiChain: $125 million
In July 2023, cross-chain bridge MultiChain fell victim to an exploit, resulting in the loss of $125 million in cryptocurrency across multiple blockchains it supported.
The largest sum of funds was obtained from the Fantom blockchain. Notably, this incident unfolded shortly after the bridge was temporarily stopped, with the team citing "multiple issues due to unforeseeable circumstances."
While no explanation has been given for the incident, analysts point to the compromise of the private keys associated with the MultiChain bridge smart contracts. The hackers took advantage of vulnerabilities in the code to carry out the attack.
Concerns have been raised about the team's possible involvement in the incident, fueled by the disappearance of MultiChain CEO Zhaojun just before the attack. Prior to the event, he was arrested by Chinese authorities and it was later revealed that he had exclusive control over the protocol's funds, contradicting MultiChain's previous claims of decentralization. Currently, the MultiChain bridge is not operational.
4.) Poloniex: $120 million
In November 2023, hackers believed to be associated with the North Korean Lazarus group allegedly siphoned a remarkable $120 million from Poloniex hot wallets, possibly gaining unauthorized access to private keys.
The consequences were as expected: operations and withdrawals stopped. In response, the exchange announced its commitment to refund users affected by the incident. Poloniex, which has operated as a centralized exchange since 2014, came under the ownership of Tron founder Justin Sun in 2019.
5.) Atomic Wallet: $100 Million
In June 2023, cryptocurrency wallet app Atomic suffered a major security breach, resulting in users' wallet accounts being completely depleted. The hackers managed to steal assets worth more than $100 million from approximately 5,500 users.
The exact cause of the incident remains uncertain as Atomic has not yet provided an explanation for the security breach. There are suspicions that the exploit could have been caused by code vulnerabilities identified by Least Authority security analysts a year before the incident.
6.) Heco Bridge (HTX): $86 million
