$3 billion loss this year in protocol exploits with $652M gone in October

October witnessed a series of malicious attacks and protocol exploits by anonymous hackers and attackers made off with at least $652.2 million in illicit gains.

October really proved disastrous as it noticed around 44 exploits affecting more than 53 protocols totalling up to a whopping $657.2 million in total losses.

#PeckShieldAlert ~44 exploits (53 protocols affected) grabbed ~$760.2M in Oct. 2022, and ~$100M already returned the exploited protocols (Total loss: $657.2M)
As of October 2022, the stolen funds (~$3B) in 2022 “doubled” last year’s loss pic.twitter.com/mKZAjVk7UU

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) October 31, 2022

Fortunately, around $100 million was returned to exploited platforms. However, the total losses due to protocol exploits and malicious attacks by hackers in 2022 totalled up to a whopping $3 billion, which was double the amount compared to last year, as per PeckShield, a security firm. These returns were not enough to cover the losses, but at least this much was returned.

October saw numerous issues like compromised wallets, exploited cross-chain bridges, insecure smart contract code, the unaccounted-for game theory behind protocol functionality, exploited cross-chain bridges and oracle price manipulation.

The BNB chain tried to restore security after some hacker stole $100 million by taking advantage of an issue on the platform’s cross-chain bridge.

Many companies and blockchains were affected by these malicious attacks by unknown attackers taking place, back to back, one after another, into an utter nightmare. 

This year has been difficult for most of the affected companies, although the attackers returned some portion of their losses. But there is no telling whether this was sufficient for the companies to cover up their losses. 

The numbers are quite frankly scary and rather terrifying. Way more than last year. Almost double.