Aside from the market downfall of many crypto firms last year, the year 2022 was the worst year when it comes to cryptocurrency hacking incidents. Last year, a total of $3.8 billion was stolen from different crypto companies and there’s speculation that most of these attacks were linked to North Korea. 

According to the data, a huge spike in hacking incidents was noticed during the months of March and October. A lot of these attacks were in the Web3 space which most likely exposed security vulnerabilities to hackers. 

Kim Jong Un’s regime has been accused of hacking crypto companies, evading international sanctions, and using stolen digital assets to fund its missile and nuclear weapon program. Although North Korea has denied these allegations, most of the hacking incidents were linked to North Korea where various groups of most prolific crypto hackers stole an estimated amount of $1.7 billion across several hacks. 

Most of the victims of the crypto hacks last year were in the DeFi protocol sector where most investors don’t use a bridge (like a bank or exchange) to transfer funds between digital wallets. As the DeFi protocol grows and becomes popular, no wonder it became the target of these hackers who they’ve stolen 80% of the total stolen funds. 

But according to David Schwed of Halborn (a blockchain security company), DeFi protocol developers should not be afraid of using traditional centralized systems for making DeFi protocol safer to use.