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The cryptocurrency industry has never seen such threats in cybersecurity, as a chain of recent attacks disclosed various concerns in the digital asset brokerage platforms. This week’s report provides several different attacks as a way of bringing greater attention to the threats that remain and the dynamic nature of cyber security in the crypto space.
The Collapse of DMM Bitcoin: A $320 Million Catastrophe
The biggest case is DMM Bitcoin, Japan’s crucial crypto exchange that faced a terrible security violation in May 2024. The attack led to the loss of 4,500 Bitcoins, worth about $320 million, which led to the closure of the exchange in October. After the severe cyberattack, it got an improvement directive from the Japanese FSA and tried to compensate for the loss of ¥ 55 billion from its parent company DMM.com.
As a pure strategy, DMM Bitcoin has already begun preparations to transfer the remaining assets to SBI VC Trade by March 2025, but under various restrictions on existing margin trading positions and fees.
Social Media Manipulation: The Coins.ph Hack
Another notable security incident occurred on December 2nd when the Filipino cryptocurrency exchange Coins.ph got its X (ex Twitter) account hacked by a supposed targeted social media attack. Cybercriminals used the platform to advertise a fake token of $COINSPH as well as use advanced social engineering tricks to lure the users.
To make a long story short, these hackers took advantage of the Solana network where the fees per transaction are minimal and the processing of every transaction takes a very short time, which made them develop an attractive fraudulent marketing story which resembled a multi-level marketing scheme.
Fortunately, Coins.ph was quick to act and the messages that were hacked were pulled out within hours.
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A landscape of Escalating Threats: Multiple small Platform Breaches
The week also saw other small-scale attacks but growing threats in the cryptocosm. For instance, the Arata ecosystem recently fell to an attack that saw its CEX wallet lose a large percentage of tokens to the attackers.
Secondly, with private key leakage as the cause of the breach, it cost DeBox $275,000 comprising 31.03 ETH and 4,879,000 BOX tokens. Most worrying was the Clipper DEX one where an API flaw put $6.5 million in danger with the confirmed amount lost standing at $500,000. Users were strictly advised to withdraw their funds immediately.
By drawing insights from these events, there is more than one way to exploit an interface, ranging from key loss, social engineering, and weaknesses in APIs. Some of the ways of protecting oneself include practising multi-factor authentication, constantly being wary of verification of all communication and using hardware wallets, and following the latest security risks.
