In a research report, the Beosin EagleEye platform, which is a subsidiary of the blockchain security audit business Beosin, said that in the third quarter of 2023, Web3 suffered losses of around $890 million as a result of a variety of security breaches, phishing scams, and rug pulls.
When the losses were broken down, it was discovered that a total of 43 individual hacker attacks were responsible for a cumulative loss of around $540 million, while phishing schemes were responsible for an approximate loss of $66.15 million.
In addition, there were 81 instances of rug pulling that occurred within the projects, which resulted in a total loss of nearly $280 million.
DeFi accounted for 67.4% of all incidents.
Decentralized finance, often known as DeFi, remained the industry that was attacked the most frequently, accounting for 67.4% of all events with 29 attacks that were reported.
Public chains suffered the largest losses, accounting for a total of 227 million dollars. Among the various project categories, this was the case.
Unfortunately, Ethereum also grabbed the unenviable lead in the number of security issues during the quarter, with 16.
When the various methods of attack were investigated, it was discovered that losses due to stolen private keys were the most expensive, totaling $223 million.
67% of the total amount was still in the hands of the cybercriminals, which is a substantial chunk of the money that had been stolen. This portion, which was around $360 million, remained in their possession.
10% of stolen funds were retrieved in Q3 2023.
The efforts that were made to recover stolen property were only partially successful, with only 10% of the cash that was stolen being recovered during the quarter.
The audit landscape revealed that audited projects and unaudited projects bore the burden of these security incidents almost equally, with audited projects representing 48.8% and unaudited projects making up 46.5% of the affected instances, respectively. This was the case due to the fact that both types of projects were affected.
Despite the fact that blockchain technology is continuing to change a variety of different sectors, the ever-present risk of cyberattacks and fraud remains a significant concern.
