Cryptocurrency Hacks Totalling $266 Million in July, with WarizX at The Forefront

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In July, hackers stole a whopping $266 million worth of cryptocurrency. This data was provided by the blockchain security firm PeckShield. Unfortunately, the biggest victim of these hacks was WarizX, a popular centralized cryptocurrency exchange based in India.

#PeckShieldAlert July 2024 witnessed 16 hacks in the crypto space, resulting in ~$266 million (w/o Compound Potential Governance Attack)) in losses.

Top 10 Hacks:#WazirX: $230 million (CeFi)#Compound: $24 million (Potential Governance Attack)#LI.FI: $9.73 million#Bittensor:… pic.twitter.com/jsmP9qLuqR

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) August 1, 2024

The $230 million loss experienced by WarizX accounts for almost the entire $266 million loss in July.

WaritzX Initiates a Recovery Plan to Help Cryptocurrency Exchange Users

The crypto exchange has launched a recovery plan for its users to assist them regain 55% of their lost assets, thereby reducing the breach’s impact. 

In July, there were other significant cryptocurrency thefts in addition to WarizX. These attacks have shown vulnerabilities within the decentralized finance platforms.

For instance, Compound, a decentralized platform for borrowing and lending cryptocurrencies, suffered the second-largest hack attack and lost $24 million.

Another big crypto hack that occurred in July involved LI.FI is a cryptocurrency trading aggregator based in Berlin. This was the third most significant hack last month, as the company suffered an $8 million loss.

According to reports from U.Today, the breach occurred because the protocol’s pre-bridge swapping feature was exploited. These incidents point to the current security challenges that both centralized and decentralized cryptocurrency platforms are facing.

Other cryptocurrency companies that suffered losses from crypto hacks include Minterest, DeltaPrime, and MonoSwap.

LI.FI Suffers Another Security Breach, Warns Users as Investigation Unfolds

LI.FI’s recent security breach caused a theft of $8 million. In a quick response, the platform left a warning on its page on X. It urged all users to avoid applications that rely on its services, such as the LI.FI team is actively investigating the breach to prevent further issues.

The team also added that those who have not enabled infinite approval for their transactions are currently not at risk. 

However, the breach affects those who manually set their accounts to allow unlimited access.

In response to this breach, Oku Trade announced that the decentralized exchange (DEX) trading platform has temporarily disabled LI.FI. This step was necessary to prevent the risk of facing further problems.

Notably, this breach was not the first crypto hack suffered by LI.FI. It experienced a theft in March 2022. The security issue was so significant that approximately $600,000 of crypto assets were stolen from 29 wallets.

According to PeckShield, this recent security breach at LI.FI is likely the exact reason for the previous incident. This would mean that the company did not learn from its past mistakes.

The flaw that was exploited in March 2022 was LI.FI’s pre-bridge swapping feature. In this attack, hundreds of thousands of dollars were stolen in a single transaction, beginning with a legitimate swap of a small amount.

However, the initial transactions were followed by multiple calls directly to various token contracts. Thus, the hackers successfully siphoned a significant amount of funds.

In response, LI.FI said the theft was successful because it had not finished its audit correctly. The company assured that it would drastically improve its security measures.