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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Discussion => Topic started by: Daltonik on October 30, 2020, 08:29:22 PM



Title: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: Daltonik on October 30, 2020, 08:29:22 PM
A study of the Atlas VPN service says that the blockchain industry has lost $13.6 billion since 2012 due to hacker attacks.

https://i.ibb.co/N2dBTkk/2020-10-31-011733.jpg (https://ibb.co/d4wYm33)

According to the researchers, 330 such attacks were carried out, and attackers preferred decentralized applications (dapps) on the EOS blockchain — 117 successful attacks. The total amount of damage was about $28.2 million.

In the Ethereum ecosystem, 33 attacks on dapps were recorded, which brought attackers $364 million. Cryptocurrency exchanges have been subjected to 87 successful attacks-the damage from them reached $4.8 billion.
Digital asset storage services faced 36 attacks, with losses totaling $7.19 billion. Over eight years, hackers earned $45.8 million from 28 blockchain hacks.

https://i.ibb.co/8rQP4Z4/2020-10-31-012237.jpg (https://ibb.co/7n0rNmN)

From January to June 2019, the blockchain industry was subjected to 94 successful hacker attacks. In the first half of 2020, this figure fell to 31.

https://i.ibb.co/xg1bQ1n/2020-10-31-012519.jpg (https://ibb.co/JpvTPvY)

The full report is available here: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/blockchain-hackers-have-stolen-over-13-6-billion-in-330-hack-events


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: jackg on October 30, 2020, 09:04:36 PM
Is the $13.6bn based on current time or the time. The coins were stolen? I think a lot of funds were lost in the mtgox "hack" and the binance "hack".

Most exchanges have been hit with hacks of currencies by now so I don't think it's surprising do many have been stolen..

(PS also the current title makes it look like blockchain.com and not the blockchain industry).


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: Ridcan on October 30, 2020, 09:18:33 PM
330 attacks are too many.  As Bitcoin becomes more valuable, such attacks may increase.  The security network should be constantly renewed against such hacking attacks.  Especially stock exchange sites should improve themselves in terms of security.  should devote a significant amount to the defense part.  Thanks for informations.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: bL4nkcode on October 30, 2020, 09:30:05 PM
"Blockchain hack" sounds like including those blockchain related companies? and does it mean that the particular cryptocurrency "blockchain" has been hacked?
Why don't just use "cryptocurrency hack" its more understandable since the study mainly talking to the "money" that was hacked/lost.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: pixie85 on October 30, 2020, 09:31:58 PM
Blockchain industry? is there even such a thing?

Money lost? Is there even a loss when coins change hands? When you unlawfully take a coin from one user you don't make the industry lose money. You make the user lose money, but you are another user who gains money. Everything remains in balance.

I feel like OP is saying that car industry has lost money due to privately owned cars being stolen. The industry doesn't care if a thief steals a car somewhere. The car will be sold on the market and someone else will keep on driving it.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: bitbunnny on October 30, 2020, 09:34:26 PM
Hackers are always after something valuable and Bitcoin is not exception. And it's still easier and less risky to still Bitcoin than fiat money and it's much harder to trace it.
Hackers attacks are increasing and we might expect this trend to continue especially if Bitcoin value will rise and exchanges are especially vulnerable.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: Welsh on October 30, 2020, 09:44:41 PM
Common tactic; Brand multiple industries under one name; in this instance the Blockchain, and make it sound like the Blockchain is inherently insecure trying to influence the market. I understand clickbait gets traffic, but its one of the reasons I tend to avoid the news as much as possible these days.  
Blockchain industry? is there even such a thing?

Money lost? Is there even a loss when coins change hands? When you unlawfully take a coin from one user you don't make the industry lose money. You make the user lose money, but you are another user who gains money. Everything remains in balance.

I feel like OP is saying that car industry has lost money due to privately owned cars being stolen. The industry doesn't care if a thief steals a car somewhere. The car will be sold on the market and someone else will keep on driving it.
Not really, unless you classify anything that uses a "Blockchain" which would be a huge market. This would involve games, gambling sites, exchanges, basically everything including alternate coins.

Its not a loss for the currency, and therefore the majority are unaffected, except for temporary changes in the price due to the news impact. Although, I do get your point with the car industry example, I would argue that we should care if there are large amounts of thefts happening within the cryptocurrency market. Although, I would like to add that Bitcoin; has much less thefts than traditional currencies, even if you compare it on a ratio basis. This might be due to the "infancy" of Bitcoin, but its quite apparent that the alternate coins industry is far more vulnerable to shady practices, even from the developers themselves.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: Yaunfitda on October 30, 2020, 09:48:49 PM
Title is misleading to me, reading it, I thought it was "https://www.blockchain.com/" who was hacked today. But it seems it was the crypto market after all, specially Ethereum and the rest of those weak altcoin code who can be exploited by any hackers or group of hackers. And the source of the article as well is a clickbait, at it is not a well known crypto blogs.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: batang_bitcoin on October 30, 2020, 10:24:30 PM
I'm thinking that it's more of crypto related hacks than "blockchain" hacks. Although it's understandable that these dapps, exchanges and other crypto related companies are using blockchain.
This hack article can even be more interesting if they have included and compared it to the lost money in the banks including, fraudulent schemes and also hacking through phishing and other methods made by robbers.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: Viscore on October 30, 2020, 10:49:39 PM
Title is misleading to me, reading it, I thought it was "https://www.blockchain.com/" who was hacked today.
That is also what I thought on the topic but while reading the OP's post, it is different. And I thought also that it is all about crypto.

Anyway, many companies are now using blockchain technology that $13.6 billion is really and probably not just only the total amount that hackers had taken out from the community.

If these activities won't stop, then it has to think that scammers will live forever. Because of those numbers, I believe that the authorities are taking actions already to minimize or even to stop it but unfortunately, the number of cases is increasing, it simply means that they are hard to eliminate these scammers.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: daarul50 on October 31, 2020, 03:13:25 AM
Title is misleading to me, reading it, I thought it was "https://www.blockchain.com/" who was hacked today.
That is also what I thought on the topic but while reading the OP's post, it is different. And I thought also that it is all about crypto.

Anyway, many companies are now using blockchain technology that $13.6 billion is really and probably not just only the total amount that hackers had taken out from the community.

If these activities won't stop, then it has to think that scammers will live forever. Because of those numbers, I believe that the authorities are taking actions already to minimize or even to stop it but unfortunately, the number of cases is increasing, it simply means that they are hard to eliminate these scammers.
No matter what , you will always found there is bad guy at the other side
The hacker attack will live forever , we will see another attempt to steal crypto either it is from personal wallet or exchange wallet, it is cannot be stopped but only prevented.
Bitcoin and any other crypto is the perfect object to stole , it has no physical , the law enforcer mostly dumb about this thing and it is just pretty easy to claim once the hack operation has been done.
If i had that ability , i will just turn it to a white hat rather the black hat.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: Alucard1 on October 31, 2020, 03:52:31 AM
That was a big loss for every company that has been hacked, 330 attacks are such a great number of attacks and it tells how hackers can make it possible, they are so much knowledge about technology and hacking system, so that, they are called blackhat hacker because of wrongdoings, well, in fact, they should have a great work and god income if they use that knowledge in good things or become a white hat hacker, many big companies needed a good security information analyst to protect their data and to avoid such hacking.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: btc_angela on October 31, 2020, 07:05:19 AM
Most probably the amount could be bigger, I reckon. But very good trick here, include blockchain + hack in the title of your article = clickbait revenues. So this industry will continue to suffer hacks if the people behind are not very careful of their codes on dapps. It's easy to write a code and deploy it, but without any third party audit or even testing before releasing it to production, there could be hackers looking at the code and trying to find out some loopholes and weaknesses.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: Lorence.xD on October 31, 2020, 07:14:27 AM
With this kind of stories, most developers who are trying to develop cryptocurrency will have to keep this one in mind because if your code has a tiny bit of weakness, expect that attacks will be launched. The only way that this hackers get away with this is that they know that crypto does not track their digital footprint, and even if tracked it will be a vague clue. In my opinion, if this stolen amounts are used by the hackers, it will just slowly come back into circulation. Possible solution for this is to make crypto a little less private which defeats its purpose but the safety will be guaranteed.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: joniboini on October 31, 2020, 11:09:58 AM
The categorization is a bit weird imo. Exchange hacks do not necessarily mean somebody is hijacking the blockchain, but due to the faulty security practices and so on. This title-bait article is really getting annoying and misleading for someone who don't know much about the topic.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: tbct_mt2 on October 31, 2020, 03:07:11 PM
Losses from wallets are biggest but can you give more details on which wallets cause the biggest losses?

In the article, they wrote about blockchain wallets but no clear details. Years ago, Electrum wallet has a big hole that was abused but is the Electrum wallet contributed the most to losses from wallet?

Electrum vulnerability allows arbitrary messages, phishing (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5090097.0)


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: hatshepsut93 on October 31, 2020, 07:36:03 PM
What an absolute dumpsterfire of an article, banding together unrelated concepts just to create an image of some "blockchain industry". No wonder the provided statistics are completely misguiding and useless. And when the chart says "hack target - blockchain" or "hack target - wallet" - what does it even mean? Does phishing count as wallet hacking or not? And why the number of incidents is so low pre-2018? I don't believe that there was only a few hacks back then.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: AmoreJaz on October 31, 2020, 10:47:50 PM
What an absolute dumpsterfire of an article, banding together unrelated concepts just to create an image of some "blockchain industry". No wonder the provided statistics are completely misguiding and useless. And when the chart says "hack target - blockchain" or "hack target - wallet" - what does it even mean? Does phishing count as wallet hacking or not? And why the number of incidents is so low pre-2018? I don't believe that there was only a few hacks back then.

we can't verify the figures presented on the graphs. so maybe just approximate values but dont treat them as valid numbers or reference. the study of this ATLAS VPN team may not be complete. just rough estimate of what happened with those hacks related to blockchain industry.
 and the bad thing here is - the media may use those graphs to present to the public that blockchain is really not safe and secure because of those billion dollar losses. they will make a story and will give negative impact to those noncrypto users.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: MCobian on October 31, 2020, 11:05:42 PM
Since cryptocurrencies became popular as a digital asset and Bitcoin prices became more expensive, hackers began to target exchanges
to steal coins. Eventually there were many exchanges that got hacked, this made some exchanges have to close down their businesses
and made the blockchain industry look bad. Therefore, with the many exchanges that are attacked by hackers, should increase awareness of
all of us in order to better protect the coins we have. Use the security features in our wallet and most importantly don't store all the coins
we have on exchanges.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: 7788bitcoin on October 31, 2020, 11:09:48 PM
and the bad thing here is - the media may use those graphs to present to the public that blockchain is really not safe and secure because of those billion dollar losses. they will make a story and will give negative impact to those noncrypto users.
The world has changed and if any media will use fake news it will be ousted and social media is active if they present something that is not accurate. For anyone who read about bitcoin and blockchain will understand the facts and people who are not aware of these important details, they care less as they have nothing to do with the cryptocurrency space nor interested about it ;).


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: AbuBhakar on October 31, 2020, 11:13:41 PM
Since cryptocurrencies became popular as a digital asset and Bitcoin prices became more expensive, hackers began to target exchanges
to steal coins. Eventually there were many exchanges that got hacked, this made some exchanges have to close down their businesses
and made the blockchain industry look bad. Therefore, with the many exchanges that are attacked by hackers, should increase awareness of
all of us in order to better protect the coins we have. Use the security features in our wallet and most importantly don't store all the coins
we have on exchanges.
Hackers will always find their way to steal and hack, some were done in hacking banking system and now that crypto become too popular their target are the crypto exchanges so better have still a hardware wallet like trezor if we know we will not gonna trade for too long or only left some amount in exchange but not totally all will he in exchange.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: aesma on October 31, 2020, 11:18:41 PM
So the biggest single number is this : "Digital asset storage services faced 36 attacks, with losses totaling $7.19 billion." Bigger than exchanges hacks. Exchanges have the excuse that they need hot wallets to process incoming and outgoing transactions, and they have many employees that could do an inside job. What are the excuse of "digital asset storage services" ?


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: tbct_mt2 on November 01, 2020, 08:05:36 AM
Parity was one of the best ethereum wallets in the past but that all changed when their wallet was exploited and accounts with multi-sig addresses got attacked losing thousands - millions. With all the security breach going around, we have to stop patronize centralized cryptocurrency service provider. eg: Exchanges, Wallets.
Much thanks. I did neither know nor use Parity wallet and I did not know about Parity wallet hack. I found this article that was written to discuss about the Parity wallet hack.
That hack was abused by bad smart contract.
Quote
According to crypto eli5, 151 wallets have been frozen, with their balances being 513,743 ETH or $152 million in total. Parity Technologies announce that 573 wallets have been affected and their total balance is unknown.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/parity-multisig-wallet-hacked-or-how-come


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: Anazarten on November 01, 2020, 12:19:07 PM
This is why as much as I trade in bitcoin I always have to be on the lookout for my welfare because there's so much threats to it. At on point my bitcoin wallet was almost hacked and I could have lost all of my ifunds. In decided to take better measures to keep my wallet safe. You can even be scammed which is way worse than being hacked because you actually fall for what you are being told by the scammers. As there are bitcoin miners and traders there are also bitcoin hackers. It has become a profession do some people and it is why you  always need to secure your account while you are trading or using bitcoin. It is a risky business.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: piebeyb on November 01, 2020, 12:25:15 PM
Is the $13.6bn based on current time or the time. The coins were stolen? I think a lot of funds were lost in the mtgox "hack" and the binance "hack".

Most exchanges have been hit with hacks of currencies by now so I don't think it's surprising do many have been stolen..

(PS also the current title makes it look like blockchain.com and not the blockchain industry).
I was thinking the same thing which is blockchain.com company but I was wrong because I read a thread title, actually to be honest I never believed that anything related to blockchain technology could be hacked unless the person who made it was the mastermind of all of it, but I don't accusing maybe a lot of the market was hacked and I am not hypocritical about that, I more believe the people inside who did it were not hackers


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: bryant.coleman on November 01, 2020, 12:41:49 PM
Well.. I am not surprised by the numbers. When I first created an account here in Bitcointalk, the board was full of such threads about people complaining that their wallets got hacked and the coins were stolen. And in most cases, the victims had failed to take proper security precautions. Had they activated 2FA or made email authentication mandatory, then 99% of these incidents could have been avoided. Nowadays the users are more careful and that is the reason why we are hearing such stories with lower frequency.


Title: Re: Blockchain losses over $13.6 billion due to hacker attacks
Post by: plast555 on November 02, 2020, 12:03:06 AM
So the biggest single number is this : "Digital asset storage services faced 36 attacks, with losses totaling $7.19 billion." Bigger than exchanges hacks. Exchanges have the excuse that they need hot wallets to process incoming and outgoing transactions, and they have many employees that could do an inside job. What are the excuse of "digital asset storage services" ?

so when Exchanges get hacked or scam they put blames on their employees that they had access to their cold wallet and they were the reason behind their hack or scam? well it is obvious that their excuses and blames are baseless, if they can't control their own employees and can't protect millions of their users then they should not open services at first point.  all of those scammers have some excuses. they are full of that.