Losses from crypto hacks down 60% in December: PeckShield

Although monetary losses declined, users still lost tens of millions of dollars to common cybersecurity exploits like address poisoning scams.

The total losses from hacks and cybersecurity exploits in the crypto industry amounted to about $76 million in December, a 60% decrease from November’s $194.2 million in losses, according to blockchain security company PeckShield.

There were 26 major crypto exploits in December, PeckShield said in an X post, with one user losing $50 million in an address poisoning scams, a type of attack where the threat actor sends small amounts of cryptocurrency from a wallet that closely resembles a legitimate wallet address, betting that the intended victim won’t notice the discrepancy.  

Typically, the first and last four characters of the addresses match, with the attacker hoping that the victim will accidentally send funds to the fraudulent address by selecting the poisoned address from their transaction history without closely examining the entire string.

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