October 2022, although only half a month has passed, This October is the month with the largest hacking activities than ever with $718 million from 11 different hacks from DeFi protocols, specifically are cross-chain bridges attacks, according to a report from Chainalysis. Most of the stolen funds came from the recent hack on the BSC bridge used for cross-chain transactions between BNB Beacon Chain and BSC due to message verification weakness that caused losing $568 million.
Comparing 2022 and previous years, specifically the latest year is 2021, with more than 200 hacks from 2021 with a total loss of more than 3 billion USD compared to 125 hacks with a total loss of 3 billion USD. At this current rate during a downtrend, 2022 could surpass 2021 in terms of both number of hacks and total value hacked.
Regarding the target audiences, hackers' targets are also quite diverse such as exchanges, Private, DeFi protocols,... Since 2015 most of the hacks come from other objects, exchanges still account for more than 25%. Until 2018, 2019, 2020 exchange hacks still accounted for the majority, mainly because exchanges at this time have low security and are easily exploited by hackers.
However, from 2021 until 2022, the number of hacks is focused on the DeFi environment because this is a very new segment for the crypto market and there are still many security holes. DeFi accounts for more than 90% of the number of hacks in 2022.
More specifically in the hacks on DeFi transactions in 2022, cross-chain bridges are still the main target for hackers compared to other platforms, there were 3 cross-chain bridges hacked this October with total value hacked reaching nearly 600 million USD, accounting for 82% of the loss in October alone and 64% of the total loss in 2022.
