Crypto Industry Faces $244 Million in Hacks During May, Marking a 40% Decline from Previous Month

The total losses suffered by crypto projects due to the 20 hacks reported in May amounted to $244.1 million, which represents a nearly 40% decrease compared to the previous month, as noted by PeckShield.

The most significant incident involved an attack on the liquidity pools of the decentralized exchange Cetus within the Sui network, with a potential loss of $223 million. However, validators in the blockchain were able to freeze assets worth $163 million across two of the hacker’s addresses.

The Sui community approved an emergency protocol update aimed at recovering funds for affected users. The DEX team offered the hacker $6 million in exchange for the return of 20,920 ETH that had been withdrawn.

Experts from Dedaub identified the root cause of the Cetus breach as a vulnerability in the liquidity parameter verification of the automated market maker.

On May 28, an unknown attacker targeted the DeFi protocol Cork Protocol and stole $12 million in cryptocurrency.

The third-largest loss for the month was a hack affecting an individual investor, resulting in a loss of $5.2 million, which is believed to be linked to North Korean hackers.

As a reminder, in the first quarter, cybercriminals stole $1.64 billion across 40 incidents.

The bulk of this figure came from the February hack of the centralized exchange Bybit, amounting to $1.46 billion. The FBI confirmed the involvement of the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group in this attack.