The security from PeckShield reports that $674 million in stolen cryptocurrency coins was recorded last year. Their January 29th report that was just issued gives some good news to all those concerned about crypto theft.

Last year, more than $2.61 billion was stolen from cryptocurrency accounts by hackers. This does not include multichain losses but primarily cyber thefts on single blockchain or other types of crypto infrastructure.

The report from the firm also detailed that cyber theft is down across the crypto industry, with a drop of 27.78% compared to the previous year. In 2022, cyber thefts of crypto currencies totaled about $3.6 billion. The improvement can be attributed to better cybersecurity measures, and when you couple that with the great recovery numbers, things are looking up for the overall security of digital currency.  

The recovered currency came from about 600 hacks, most for these large ones that included over a million dollars in stolen coins. How does this year’s recovery of stolen funds compare to last years? According to the same report, PeckShield says that in 2022, around $133 million was recovered.

A Vast Improvement

Why are the numbers so much better this year? The firm attributes that to an increase in bug bounty programs that can identify hackers and find weaknesses in the security system to prevent hacks. They also said that various crypto platforms negotiated more vigorously with hackers to recover the stolen funds. In addition, the firm worked with law enforcement as well as major crypto exchanges like Tether to locate funds and freeze them when they noticed hacks. That helped with the recovery, often leading the firm to the stolen assets.

Which kinds of attacks are most common across the crypto marketplace? Those would be flash loan attacks, says PeckShield, which account for 40% of all hacks recorded in 2023. Flash loans are attacks where the hacker modifies the terms of the smart contract to borrow money without putting down any collateral or providing other details that would normally be required.

In addition, the firm noted that many instances of stolen crypto funds were the results of scams and not hacks.