From CoinDesk · By Olivier Acuna
Hackers stole $1.18 billion from crypto projects in the third quarter, up 55% from the previous quarter, according to blockchain security firm Hacken.
About $900 million in losses stemmed from compromised suppliers or developer tools, uninstalled security fixes or components excluded from security reviews.
Hacken warned that audit badges can give investors a false sense of security because reviews often omit wallets, signing systems and third-party software that attackers target.
Crypto investors may be putting too much faith in security audits that fail to cover the systems hackers actually target, according to blockchain security firm Hacken.
In a report released on Thursday, Hacken found that hackers stole $1.18 billion across 107 incidents during the third quarter, 55% more than in the previous quarter. Of that amount, $906.8 million was lost due to compromised suppliers or developer tools, publicly available security fixes that were not installed or components excluded from the most recent security review.
"The problem is always scope." Andrii Matiukhin, co-founder and board director at the company, said in an interview with CoinDesk. "It's expensive to have enormous scopes of all components that interact with funds or influence economics, and teams cut corners, auditing only critical parts of the service.”
The findings raise questions about how much protection investors can expect from crypto projects advertising themselves as audited. Hacken said customers often assume an audit covers an entire platform when it may examine only specific smart contracts, leaving wallets, signing systems and third-party software outside its scope.
“Usually, when a customer sees a new project, they see an audit badge, assume the whole system is covered, and lose money through a key, a supplier, or a setting that was never tested,” Matiukhin said.
The biggest incident in the period was the September attack on crypto exchange Bitget, which lost at least $352 million after hackers exploited a vulnerability in a third-party security product to gain access to its withdrawal infrastructure, according to the report.
The risks extend beyond exchanges. Just this week, hardware wallet maker Ledger said it found an unauthorized hardware “spy” implant in a device sold by CryptoBilis, a Southeast Asian reseller, resulting in losses of about $93 million.
Three crypto bridges and cross-chain protocols lost more than $35 million during a six-hour exploit in July, Hacken said. AFX Trade accounted for $24 million of that after attackers gained control of its validator keys. Other attacks walked off with $319 million at Liquid Network, at least $75 million at Tectonic, and roughly $114 million at Coldcard wallet software.