London : Hackers have stolen nearly $615 million worth of cryptocurrency from a blockchain project linked to the popular online game Axi Infinity in the latest cyberghost to hit the digital asset sector.
Ronin, a network that allows the transfer of crypto coins across various blockchains, said on Tuesday that hackers stole approximately 173,600 Ether tokens and USD 25.5 million worth of tokens on March 23.
At the time of the announcement, the loot was worth approximately $615 million – and, due to the change in the value of the token, about $540 million at the time of the hack – making the theft one of the largest thefts on record.
Here are some of the other major thefts that have affected the crypto sector since the birth of bitcoin in 2008.
poly network
Hackers stole approximately $610 million in August 2021 from Poly Network, a platform that facilitates peer-to-peer token transactions. The hackers behind the robbery later returned almost all the money stolen.
The hack highlighted vulnerabilities in the growing decentralized finance – DeFi – sector, where users lend, borrow and save in digital tokens, bypassing traditional gatekeepers of finance such as banks and exchanges.
coincheck
In January 2018, hackers stole approximately $530 million worth of cryptocurrency from Tokyo-based exchange Coincheck. Thieves attacked one of Coincheck’s “hot wallets” – a digital folder stored online – to extort funds, drawing attention to security at exchanges.
The hack raised questions about regulation of the digital asset market in Japan https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-cryptocurrency-regulation-idUSKBN1FW04F. South Korea’s intelligence agency said at the time that a North Korean hacking group may have been behind the robbery.
mount gox
In one of the earliest and most high-profile crypto hacks, nearly $500 million worth of bitcoin was stolen from the Mount Gox exchange in Tokyo – then the world’s largest – between 2011 and 2014.
Mount Gox, which once handled 80% of the world’s bitcoin trade, filed for bankruptcy in early 2014 after the hack was revealed, in which nearly 24,000 customers lost access to their funds.
wormhole
DeFi site Wormhole suffered theft of $320 million last month after hackers made off with 120,000 digital tokens tied to the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether.
The crypto arm of Chicago-based Jump Trading, which acquired the developer behind Wormhole a year earlier, later turned the fund to “community members as a whole and to support Wormhole as it continues to evolve.”
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