$28M stolen from cryptocurrency exchange Deribit, details inside

Netherlands-based cryptocurrency exchange Deribit on 1 November tweeted that it lost $28 million to a hack. The company informed that its client assets have not been affected. In addition, it has halted withdrawals until it is completely certain that it is safe to re-open.

The hack is isolated to the BTC, ETH, and USDC hot wallets, Deribit said. It also mentioned that client assets, Fireblocks, or any of the cold storage addresses remain safe as loss is covered by company reserves.

Deribit halted its withdrawals, including custodians Copper Clearloop and Cobo, until it is certain about the complete security of its network.

2022 to witness more hacking exploits?

Only the last month, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis published a finding that October was already the biggest month this year for hacking activity. We must note that this finding was presented on 13 October, even before mid-month.

As of 13 October, $3 billion had been lost to 125 different hacks over decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols in 2022.

Source: Twitter/Chainalysis

It predicted that the current year will most likely surpass 2021 as the biggest year for hacking.

Source: Twitter/Chainalysis

Most hacks in 2019 occurred on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, but as those companies increased security, the vast majority of hacks, approximately 90% in 2022, occurred on DeFi protocols.

Cross-chain bridges are today the most popular target for hackers. The most recent of these hacks was a roughly $100 million exploit in the bridge between BNB Smart Chain and Beacon Chain.

In February, the Wormhole bridge lost $325 million in an exploit; in March, Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge had a $625 million exploit.

Erin Plante, vice president of investigations at Chainalysis, told Fortune last month, “While not foolproof, a valuable first step towards addressing security issues is for extremely rigorous code audits to become the gold standard, both for developers building protocols and investors evaluating them.”