Crypto Hacked: $3.1 BILLION Gone! 😱

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Right. So, apparently the cryptocurrency world has lost over $3.1 billion to hackers in the first *half* of 2025. Which is… a lot. Like, a really, really lot. More than all of 2024 combined. Honestly, you’d think they’d have learned by now. It’s almost as if building a digital economy on “trustless” technology requires, you know, *trustworthy* security. Who knew?

According to Hacken (who, presumably, get paid to tell us this sort of depressing news), it’s all down to old, clunky code, terrible access control (seriously, who’s letting *anyone* in?), and now… AI. Because of course it’s AI. Everything’s AI’s fault these days. It’s like the robots are deliberately trying to steal our digital pennies. 🤖

Apparently, 59% of the losses are down to letting the wrong people in (the digital equivalent of leaving your front door unlocked, basically), and another $273 million vanished because of dodgy smart contracts. Honestly, “smart” is doing a *lot* of heavy lifting in that description.

There was this *huge* $1.5 billion Bybit incident (someone’s having a bad February, I suspect), but apparently that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The entire industry is apparently riddled with security holes. It’s like a digital sieve. You pour money in, it just… disappears.

And get this. Hacken says it’s not even the *complex* tech failing anymore. It’s just… people making mistakes. Humans! Honestly, what are we even *for*? 🤦‍♀️ They’re saying human and procedural errors are now a bigger problem than actual hacking. So, it’s less ‘sophisticated cyberattack’ and more ‘someone left the keys in the server room’.

Legacy Infrastructure and Operational Vulnerabilities

Apparently, old code is still hanging around, like a digital dinosaur, begging to be exploited. They mention GMX v1 – honestly, v1? It sounds ancient. Yehor Rudytsia (a name that sounds very important and slightly intimidating) pointed out that projects need to either fix their old code or just… stop using it. Radical concept, I know.

Operational stuff is causing problems too – about $1.83 billion lost that way. Cetus, a DeFi platform, got hit for $223 million because of a simple calculation error. A calculation error! You’d think they’d have, you know, *checked* the numbers. But no. They just let someone steal a small fortune with a flash loan and hundreds of tiny positions. Apparently, a bit of real-time monitoring could have prevented 90% of that. 90%! Honestly.

AI and Insecure APIs Add Complexity to Web3 Security

And now AI is joining the party. A 1,025% increase in AI-related attacks. I mean, seriously? 🤯 It’s mostly because of insecure APIs (which, apparently, are like open windows for hackers). 34% of Web3 projects are now using AI, making themselves even *more* vulnerable to things like “model hallucination” and “prompt injection”. I didn’t even know those were things. Sounds like a sci-fi novel, honestly.

Apparently, even the official security guidelines (ISO/IEC 27001 and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework – thrilling reading, I’m sure) can’t cope with this new AI chaos. They need updated rules, apparently. It’s all very complicated. Frankly, I’m just relieved my bank isn’t based on blockchain. Yet.

So, yeah. More sophisticated attacks, more automation, more social engineering. Basically, everything is getting harder to secure. Which means, presumably, more money will disappear. It’s all very… predictable, isn’t it? 🙄

Featured image created with DALL-E, Chart from TradingView

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2025-07-25 04:14