Late October 2023 saw a major resurgence in the crypto market, with Bitcoin (BTC) at the forefront. The industry was back in the public eye, as evidenced by a Grayscale poll that revealed 70% of U.S. voters wanting a president knowledgeable about blockchain, AI, and other technologies. Unfortunately, this rise in attention also reignited crypto hacks and scams. To take a look at the year’s highest-profile cases, Finbold examined each quarter of 2023.
The first case of the year was the Euler Finance hack on March 13, which saw $197 million in DAI, wBTC, USDC, and stETH stolen. Surprisingly, the attacker – who identified as Jacob – apologized for the hack and returned the stolen assets.
The second quarter was marked by the Multichain attack in July, with $125 million in USDC, DOGE, USDT, wBTC, and wETH taken. A week after the attack, Multichain announced it was shutting down, detailing the unfortunate events that led up to the heist.
The third quarter saw wallets belonging to the online crypto casino Stake.com drained of $41 million, with the FBI suggesting North Korea’s Lazarus Group as the perpetrator.
Finally, the Ledger Connect Kit attack in December drew the most attention of the year. The hacker injected malicious code into Kit v1.1.7, resulting in the theft of $600,000. Ledger took swift action to fix the issue that led to the attack and promised to make the affected users whole.
