Cryptocurrency Attacks Up in 2024 After a Brief Decline

The year 2024 has seen a worrying rise in cryptocurrency hacking and ransomware activities, according to a recent report by Chainalysis. Although overall illicit transactions in the crypto market have decreased by 19.6%, from $20.9 billion to $16.7 billion, specific criminal activities like theft and ransomware have surged dramatically.

Crypto hacking, which had been on the decline in 2023, has made a significant comeback this year. By the end of July 2024, over $1.58 billion in cryptocurrency had been stolen, reflecting an 84% increase compared to the same period last year. This rise is partly due to the increasing value of cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin experiencing a substantial price increase of about 130% during this period.

Hackers have shifted their attention back to centralized exchanges (CEX) after years of focusing on decentralized platforms. Centralized exchanges have been hit hard in 2024, with some of the most significant breaches occurring there. A notable example is the Japanese exchange DMM, which lost $305 million in Bitcoin in a high-profile hack. This single incident accounted for nearly 19% of the total value stolen in crypto hacks this year.

Ransomware attacks have also escalated in severity. In July 2024, Chainalysis recorded the largest single ransomware payment ever, with $75 million paid to the ransomware group Dark Angels. This represents a 96% increase in the maximum payment size compared to 2023 and a 335% jump from 2022.

Eric Jardine, Chainalysis’ cybercrime research lead, commented on the trend, stating, “It is not clear if this trend is purely a crime of opportunity or if centralized services, which tend to act as custodians for large amounts of user funds, have been targeted more simply because the value of the assets they hold have become relatively more tantalizing compared to, say, DeFi services.”