Crypto Hacks, Rug Pulls Decreased by 20% in 2024

The crypto sector has recorded a 20% decrease in losses from hacks and rug pulls compared to the previous year. According to a report by Immunefi, the crypto community endured over $473.22 million in losses across 108 incidents till May 2024.

This marks a reduction from the $595.43 million reported in the same timeframe in 2023.

Over $52 Million Lost to Crypto Hacks in May 2024

Breaking down the data further, May 2024 accounted for $52.37 million lost through 21 distinct incidents. This represents a 12% decrease from May 2023, where losses totaled $59.34 million, and a significant 28% drop from April 2024’s $72.60 million.

Among the notable victims was Gala Games, a crypto gaming project, which suffered a severe breach on May 20. A hacker exploited a flaw in the platform’s smart contract, creating 5 billion of its GALA tokens.

Read more: Crypto Project Security: A Guide to Early Threat Detection

These unauthorized actions led to the conversion of 592 million GALA into approximately $21.8 million worth of Ethereum (ETH). The Gala Games team responded promptly by blacklisting the hacker’s address. This prevented further unauthorized conversion of GALA tokens to other tokens.

Eventually, the team recovered the Ethereum and burned the remaining $4.4 billion GALA tokens.

“We would like to thank Binance for working with us and with law enforcement to identify the culprit behind the recent hack,” Gala Games wrote.

Additionally, Sonne Finance, a decentralized liquidity market protocol, experienced a substantial cyber attack on May 15. Initially, the theft involved $3 million from its USD Coin and Wrapped Ethereum contracts on the Optimism chain. However, the situation quickly escalated, and within 30 minutes, losses were revised to an alarming $20 million.

In May, decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms were particularly hard hit, suffering most of the exploits. Meanwhile, centralized finance (CeFi) platforms reported no major attacks.

Interestingly, a closer look at the loss distribution reveals that hacks were the predominant cause, with $50.61 million lost in 14 specific incidents. Meanwhile, rug pull (fraud) events were less significant, totaling just $1.75 million across seven incidents, representing 3.3% of the total losses.

Furthermore, Ethereum and BNB Chain emerged as the most targeted networks during the month, accounting for 62% of the total losses. Specifically, Ethereum was affected by nine incidents, which contributed to 43% of the total losses across all chains. BNB Chain experienced four incidents, representing 19% of the overall losses.

Read more: What Is a Rug Pull? A Guide to the Web3 Scam

The decrease in crypto losses due to hacks and rug pulls in 2024 is a positive development. However, it also highlights the ongoing challenges in blockchain and crypto security.