From the beginning of 2024 till the third quarter of this year the broader cryptocurrency market has marked several milestones and simultaneously it has mirrored over 150 incidents losing more than $1.50 billion in a few months.
Most recently bad actors targeted a DAO ( Decentralized Autonomous Organisation) using the social engineering technique resulting in losing around $4.5 million. Worth noting that hackers succeeded in manipulating the prices of Tap tokens, helping them to victimize Tapioca DAO resulting in severe losses.
Such incidents have sparked a debate among DAO users about the security of data and funds. As per data from CoinMarketCap, the trading prices of Tap tokens fell over 97% in the past 24 hours reaching $0.03572 before the breach in Tapioca, its token highest traded at $1.42.
Source: CoinMarketCap
The cause-effect of the breach has been also observed over the intraday trading volume as it grew 11276% reaching $13.54 million. A blockchain analysis firm noted that hackers succeeded in taking away $4.4 million in USDC and Ethereum, later swapped into USDT.
In an X post dated October 18, 2024, the Tapioca Foundation notes that “Tapioca DAO has suffered a social engineering attack. This enabled the attacker to compromise the TAP token vesting contract’s ownership, allowing the attacker to claim and sell this 30M vested TAP, which impacted the TAP/ETH DAO-owned LP.”
Tapioca DAO has suffered a social engineering attack. This enabled the attacker to compromise the TAP token vesting contract’s ownership which allowed the attacker to claim and sell this 30M vested TAP, which impacted the TAP/ETH DAO owned LP. The attacker then also comprised the…
— Tapioca Foundation (@tapioca_dao) October 18, 2024
Some other leading blockchain analysis firms also note that the bad actor even used a fake X account ( formerly Twitter) to attract individual Tap investors to victimize them. To avoid further losses after the identification of the breach the foundation started the operation with Web3 security phones to safeguard their users and collateral.
The DAO notes continuing the recovery efforts “ Please await the official announcement, Post Mortem, and TAP Token Migration Plan regarding today’s unfortunate events for a “source of truth” on all details surrounding the matter.”
Major Crypto Hacks of 2024
One of the major heists in the crypto market since the beginning of 2024 was the WazirX hacks, which included Orbit Chain, Radiant Capital, PlayDaap, and BitForex, among over 100 others.
On October 17, 2024, Todayq reported that Radiant Capital, a decentralized finance crypto lender, was breached on BNB Smart Chain for $50 million in crypto. Another major theft of this is Ronin which was first hacked for $12 million in February 2024 for the second time in two years.
Earlier this month it was reported that an Indonesian cryptocurrency exchange, Indodax was attacked by a bad actor resulting in losses of over $20 million. The hack, according to the report, affected the hot wallets of Indodax through which a part of the exchange’s digital currencies are stored and actively used for operations.
The pace of illicit transactions has surpassed the adoption and growth rate of the cryptocurrency world, yet market experts argue that there is a severe need to address these problems to make digital assets more reputable.
