.png){kind=logo}
- Insights
- Cryptocurrencies
- Stocks
- White Papers
- Industry
- Geography
- Insights
- Cryptocurrencies
- Stocks
- White Papers
- Industry
- Geography
The advancement in technology has been a blessing for the fact that tasks and business goals are achieved in the best possible manner. On the flip side, however, hacks and data breaches have become quite common. The cryptocurrency market, too, saw a significant number of hacks to date. On that note, let us have a look at the top 10 remarkable crypto exchange hacks in 2022 so far, that'll leave you stunned. Keep reading!
Who isn't aware of crypto.com, one of the world's most well-known crypto exchanges? This crypto exchange was the first one to be hacked in 2022 which led to a compromise on a good number of client accounts. Also, the hack forced the exchange to shut down certain services for 13 to 14 hours. The specific cause of the breach has yet to be determined.
As far as this crypto exchange hack is concerned, a hacker had exploited smart contracts on the Solana-to-Ethereum bridge to mint and cash out on wrapped ether. All this – without depositing collateral. What followed was Jump Crypto, the venture capital firm behind Wormhole, replenished the stolen funds to keep Solana-based platforms affected by the hack solvent.
This is definitely one of the most remarkable crypto exchange hacks as the hackers gained control over a majority of the cryptographic keys that secure the play-to-earn game's cross-chain bridge. Wondering what exactly had happened? Well, four of the nine keys were stolen when an Axie developer clicked on a fake job offer PDF.
IRA Financial Trust, a crypto-focused retirement and pension platform suffered a blow when hackers accessed a "master key" that bypassed all security measures to customer accounts. IRA Financial Trust went a step ahead to go the legal way. It sued Gemini, the crypto exchange where customer funds were stored, for alleged negligence leading to the hack.
This was a cryptocurrency exchange hack that took place in the first month of the year wherein the hacker manipulated a smart contract bug on the Binance-based Qubit Finance's QBridge to mint wrapped ether tokens without depositing funds. Things worsened as the developers behind Qubit trimmed the protocol's staff and reclassified it as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
Now, this is indeed an interesting crypto exchange hack. What happened is that a string of fake accounts used an "infinite mint glitch" to put up worthless collateral for Cashio's CASH stablecoin. What is worth a mention is that the coin's peg cratered to zero and has not recovered.
The month of June was not promising for Harmony Bridge as the North Korea-linked Lazarus group accessed two of the Binance and Ethereum bridge's five security keys, approving transactions siphoning assets from the bridge. Though the company has not yet compensated the users for what happened but on a progressive note, Harmony now requires four of five validator keys to reach a consensus on transactions.
In April, a hacker used a "flash loan", to accumulate enough assets to control the stablecoin's governance protocol. A flash loan is where funds are borrowed and repaid in the same transaction. The hacker, later, passed a proposal donating funds to Ukraine before making off with the collateral.
Yet another crypto exchange hack that happened in April wherein the hacker used a "reentrancy" bug in the lending protocol's code to take out a loan while also withdrawing the collateral put up on the loan. The fact that Fei stablecoin remains at its dollar peg is worth a mention.
AscendEX has also been a victim of an exchange hack due to a compromised hot wallet. An amount as high as USD 80 million is estimated to be stolen. The assets lost were from a BSC and Polygon wallet which were transferred off the exchange.
