LONDON (Reuters) – The amount of cryptocurrency stolen in cyberattacks globally more than doubled in the first six months of 2024 from a year earlier, driven by a small number of large attacks and rising cryptocurrency prices, blockchain researchers TRM Labs said on Friday.
Hackers had stolen more than $1.38 billion worth of cryptocurrency as of June 24, 2024, compared with $657 million in the same period in 2023, TRM Labs said in a report.
The average theft was one and a half times higher than the previous year, the report said.
“While we haven’t seen any fundamental changes to the security of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, we have seen a significant increase in the value of various tokens, from bitcoin to ETH (ether), compared to the same period last year,” said Ari Redbord, global head of policy at TRM Labs.
This means cybercriminals are more motivated to attack crypto services and can steal more when they do so, Redbord said.
Cryptocurrency prices in general have recovered from the lows hit in late 2022 following the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange, FTX. It hit an all-time high of $73,803.25 in March of this year.
Among the biggest cryptocurrency losses so far this year was the theft of roughly $308 million worth of bitcoins from Japanese cryptocurrency exchange DMM Bitcoin, in what the company called an “unauthorized leak.”
Cryptocurrency companies are frequent targets of hacks and cyberattacks, although losses on this scale are rare.
Redbord said stolen cryptocurrency volumes in 2022 were around $900 million, partly due to more than $600 million stolen from a blockchain network linked to online gambling. The United States has linked North Korean hackers to that theft.
The United Nations has accused North Korea of using cyberattacks to fund its nuclear and missile programs. North Korea has previously denied allegations of hacking and other cyberattacks.