Crypto hacks caused nearly $3 billion in damage in 2024, with access control flaws responsible for 78% of losses, data shows.
2024 proved to be another challenging year for blockchain security, with nearly $3 billion lost to crypto hacks, according to Hacken’s latest report. research report.
Although the overall financial impact was comparable to that in 2023, attacks exploiting access control vulnerabilities increased sharply. Hacken’s data shows that these flaws accounted for 78% of losses and affected a wide range of sectors, including decentralized finance, centralized finance, and gaming/metaverse platforms.
According to the report, access control vulnerabilities were found to be the biggest threat, accounting for 75% of losses in crypto hacks, excluding phishing. Meanwhile, DeFi accounted for 20.4% of total hacking losses, while CeFi losses made up 30%, the report said. The gaming and metaverse sectors also faced major losses, totaling $389 million – about 20% of all crypto hack damage.
At the same time, cross-chain bridge-related losses saw a notable decline to $117 million, from $330 million in 2023 and $1.9 billion in 2022. Additionally, the blockchain security company noted that crypto projects were experiencing an increase in DNS hijacking incidents, which emphasized the need for comprehensive security strategies.
Hacken claims that the data comes from verified crypto project reports, including platforms such as X, postmortems and databases.
