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DeFi Security Incident Immunefi Reports November 2021 Hacking of $343 Million
In November, almost $343 million was lost to fraud and hackers, making it the highest monthly cryptocurrency loss month of 2023 thus far, according to the most recent report from web3 bug bounty platform Immunefi. The losses for this month are more than fifteen times more than the gains from October's scams, which totaled about $22 million. According to Immunefi, there have been 296 instances of cryptocurrency hacks and rug pulls that have cost over $1.75 billion in total.
CeFi versus DeFi
Notably, the target of crypto attacks shifted in November. Platforms for centralized finance (CeFi) became the primary victims, surpassing those for decentralized finance (DeFi) in terms of total lost money.
DeFi accounted for 46.2% ($158.6 million) of the losses over 37 occurrences throughout the month, while CeFi accounted for 53.8% ($184.4 million) over four, mostly from well-known attacks on platforms including Poloniex, HTX (previously Huobi), and Kronos Research. In Immunefi's Q3 report, DeFi exploits were responsible for 72.9% of the losses.
More than $335 million was lost to hacking incidents in November, spanning 18 incidents, demonstrating the persistent dominance of hacks over fraud in cryptocurrency attacks. According to Immunefi, damages from about 23 fraud occurrences totaled close to $7.5 million.
Ethereum and BNB Chain are the Main Targets.
In November, BNB Chain and Ethereum continued to be the most targeted chains, with a combined loss of 83% of the total. With 22 occurrences or 53.7% of the losses, BNB Chain experienced the most individual attacks. Of the funds exploited, Ethereum saw 12 assaults, or 29.3%. The remaining occurrences were Fantom, Optimism, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Heco Chain.
Immunefi claims that in its capacity as a forum for reporting vulnerabilities, it has so far paid out more than $85 million in bounties and helped users of protocols including Chainlink, The Graph, Synthetix, and MakerDAO save over $25 billion in cash. As a first step in decentralizing the bug bounty platform, Immunefi introduced on-chain vaults in September.