According to CryptoPotato, Scam Sniffer reported that scammers stole $55 million worth of cryptocurrency in January and set up more than 11,000 phishing websites. Most of these thefts occurred on the Ethereum mainnet, with Arbitrum, BNB, Optimism, and Polygon closely behind. The surge in phishing attacks coincided with heightened activity within crypto communities following a series of airdrops in the previous month.
These scams, often occurring alongside airdrops and other project activities, impacted around 40,000 individuals. Fraudsters created phishing websites in January, impersonating various projects such as Manta Network, Frame, SatoshiVM, AltLayer, Dymension, zkSync, Pyth, OpenSea, Optimism, Blast, and others. The top seven victims lost $17 million in total due to phishing signatures such as ERC20 Permit, Create2, increaseAllowance, and Swap. Hackers commonly exploited the ERC-20 Permit function, tricking users into unknowingly transferring funds from their non-custodial wallets under the guise of legitimate operations.
Throughout 2023, scammers and hackers executed numerous cyberattacks and rug pulls, resulting in the theft of $1.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency. De.Fi’s REKT database documented at least 455 incidents in 2023, with the largest hack amounting to $231 million, attributed to Multichain. Cybersecurity experts and white hat hackers recovered approximately $200 million from the overall sum. Ethereum led in the frequency of hacks, contributing to over 70% of the stolen funds in five out of twelve months in 2023. The most detrimental vulnerability was Access Control, accounting for half of all stolen funds, whereby hackers’ or insiders’ unauthorized access to hot wallets led to significant losses, averaging $31 million per incident.
