Stolen funds from cryptocurrency platforms saw a rise in 2020: Report

Over $520 million value of cryptocurrency was stolen from providers and people by way of hacks and non-technical assaults equivalent to social engineering or phishing efforts, in 2020, as per a Chainalysis crypto crime report. The report said a rise within the quantity of cryptocurrency stolen in comparison with 2019. 

Knowledge from the report said greater than half of the quantity stolen in 2020 was because of the hack of the cryptocurrency change KuCoin, by the North-Korean cybercriminal syndicate Lazarus Group. The group was accused of stealing $275 million value of cryptocurrency from KuCoin, which made it the most important cryptocurrency theft for 2020. The change claimed to have recovered $204 million value of stolen funds. Lazarus Group was additionally accountable for different cryptocurrency change assaults such because the 2019 UpBit Hack, from which $49 million value of cryptocurrency was stolen. Total, the group is believed to have stolen greater than $1.75 billion value of cryptocurrency, the report claimed.

Different cryptocurrency thefts for 2020 had been $40 million from Josh Jones, $34 million from Harvest Finance, $25 million from Lendf.me, $20 million from Pickle Finance, $15 million from Eminence, $9 million from an undisclosed change, $8.3 million from MakerDAO, $8 million from bZx and $8 million from Warp Finance, and lots of extra.

The report insights confirmed that the utilization for decentralised finance (DeFi) platforms went up in 2020, and with it the quantity stolen from DeFi platform has additionally seen an increase. Regardless of representing six p.c of all cryptocurrency actions, thefts from DeFi platforms represented round 33% of cryptocurrencies stolen in 2020. Cybercriminals had been accused of stealing greater than $170 million from DeFi platforms for a similar 12 months. 

As per the report, stolen funds primarily transfer to exchanges, nevertheless, DeFi platforms’ share of all stolen funds obtained greater than doubled throughout 2020.The decentralised nature of DeFi platforms is an element within the platform’s utilization as a cash laundering mechanism, as many don’t gather know your buyer (KYC) info on transactions or report on transaction exercise as has been said by the financial institution secrecy act (BSA) and different monetary rules.

(With insights from the Chainalysis Crypto Crime Report, 2021)