According to data from blockchain security company Peckshield, in April cryptocurrency hackers stole $93.4 million through 41 exploits, an average of 1-2 per day.
Data show that compared to March, the amount of money stolen in April has decreased significantly, last month hackers stole more than 200 million USD from DeFi projects. However, April figures were still significantly higher than February with $35.3 million stolen.
Source: Peckshield
Meanwhile, DeFillama data shows that DeFi projects lost a total of $276.4 million in Q1 2023.
Specific data
In terms of monetary value, the largest attack was a sandwich attack on maximum mineable value (MEV) bots resulting in $25 million in losses. CryptoSlate reports that USDT issuer Tether has blacklisted the bot's confirmation address, sparking protests from the crypto community.
Meanwhile, MEV bots have long caused controversy in the industry, due to their ability to extract value from cryptocurrency traders. According to MEV blocker, these bots have mined more than $1.38 billion from blockchain network users.
To put things into perspective, an anonymous MEV bot operator, Jaredfromthesubsway, made over $1.4 million by sandwiching the trades of crypto investors trading memecoins.
Meanwhile, Singapore-based exchange Bitrue lost nearly $23 million in an attack after one of its hot wallets was compromised. Another centralized exchange Gdac was exploited for $13 million.
There are also many other decentralized finance protocols that were victims of various attacks in April such as Yearn Finance, Hundred Finance, SushiSwap, 0vix Protocol and Terraport.
Notably in recent days, decentralized exchange Merlin DEX based on the zkSync platform lost about 2 million USD. Blockchain security firm CertiK audited the project before launch and promised to refund affected users.
Currently, hackers are still relying on coin mixing protocols to erase their tracks. As of April 30, hackers have transferred more than 1000 ETH and 2515 BNB to the TornadoCash protocol, while 203 ETH were sent to the FixedFloat protocol.
Synthetic PCBs
