- Orbit Bridge suffered access breach in the evening of Dec. 31
- $2 billion was stolen in scams and exploits in 2023
- Rug pulls, hacks, phishing scams saw major drop from 2022
The December 2023 hack of Orbit’s cross-chain bridge pushed up the amount of crypto stolen that month to just under $100 million, Cointelegraph wrote, citing blockchain security firms PeckShield, CertiK, and Beosin.
It was also in the top 10 of hacks
On Jan. 1, blockchain sleuth PeckShield reported that the $81.5 million cross-chain attack on Orbit Bridge made December the fifth-highest month for hacks last year. It was also in the top ten of hacks targeting a cross-chain bridge in the last three years.
Access breach on New Year’s Eve
Orbit Bridge is the bridging service of Orbit Chain, a cross-chain protocol founded in South Korea in 2018. Its ecosystem suffered a breach of access in the evening of Dec. 31, 2023.
On Jan. 1, Orbit Chain asked leading cryptocurrency exchanges to freeze the assets stolen, adding their team was cooperating with law enforcement agencies and making efforts to trace and freeze same assets.
Crypto worth billions was stolen in 2023
According to estimates from blockchain security firms PeckShield, CertiK, and Beosin, between $1.51 billion and $2 billion was stolen in scams, hacks, and exploits last year. In September and November alone, more than $700 million was lost, PeckShield reported.
The biggest attacks in November were on Poloniex and HTX/Heco Bridge, which lost $131.4 million resp. $113.3 million.
In July, Multichain lost $125 million in a hack. The biggest exploit of the year, however, was of the Euler Finance ecosystem in March. Euler lost $197 million.
Rug pulls, phishing, hacks dropped last year
Beosin makes room for hope, noting that rug pulls, hacks, and phishing scams saw a major drop compared to 2022. Total losses were down by more than $4 billion y/y. The biggest decline was in losses from hacks, amounting to more than 60%: from $3.6 billion in 2022 to $1.4 billion last year.
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