Pig Butchering a long-term crypto fraud scheme was named the biggest threat to crypto users in 2024 accounting for $3.6 billion in losses.
According to a report by Cyvers, an industry-leading Web 3 security firm Pig Butchering came out on top amongst other forms of crypto fraud schemes in 2024. The fraud scheme led to about $3.6 billion in stolen funds on the Ethereum blockchain alone.
Pig Butchering led to $3.96 billion in losses in 2023 according to the FBI. Cyvers tracked over $3.6 billion in victim funds across more than 150k addresses and 800,000 transactions.
Additionally, Access control incidents constituted a huge percentage of total losses in the year accounting for 81% of losses despite comprising 41.6% of incidents.
The year 2024 recorded more crypto fraud cases than the previous year with a huge number of cases in point. The report by Cyvers summed up the significant fraud cases in the year with details on the nature of the fraud schemes and the numbers associated with them.
Cyber threat up by 40% in 2024
The Report revealed that Cyber threats were up 40% in 2024 compared to the previous year. The year saw over $2.3 billion lost across 165 incidents
The year saw a 40% increase in losses year on year but is still 37% down from the 2022 level.
Ethereum was the most affected blockchain accounting for a huge percentage of Pig butchering scams in the industry.
According to the report, there were three major attack types in 2024. They include
- Access control breaches account for $1.9 billion in losses across 67 incidents
- Smart contract exploits accounting for $456.8 million in losses across 98 incidents.
- Address poisoning led to a $68.7 million loss in one single incident.
Over $1.3 billion Recovered in 2024
Recovery and Bug Bounty services confirmed that about $1.3 billion was recovered in 2024 thanks to the efforts of onchain sleuths like ZachXBT
The first quarter of 2024 witnessed 53 incidents the highest in the four quarters of the year. The highest amount of funds ($760 million) was lost in Q3 2024 while Q4 recorded the lowest activity and losses.
Top Incidents for the Year
The report compiled the top fraud incidents for the year in terms of the amount of money lost and the scale of the attack
WazirX attack: India’s biggest exchange lost $235 million to hackers following a multi-sig wallet vulnerability.
Radiant Capital attack: Radiant Capital lost $50 million via compromised devices.
DMM Exchange Hack: A $305 million breach caused by a private key compromise on DMM’s bItcoin hot wallet.
Bing X exploits: BingX lost $52 million when attackers compromised its hot wallets and moved funds to various networks.
Access control breaches key to losses
Deddy Lavid, the Ceo of Cyvers speaking to Crypto News highlighted access control breaches as the dominant factor across most hacks that occurred in the year. He believes education could play a huge role in mitigating the threat of Access control breaches.
“ The primary reason hackers managed to surpass the amount stolen by nearly 40% in 2023 was the rise of access control breaches, particularly in centralized exchanges and custodians.
These incidents were often facilitated by compromised private keys and weak key management systems, exemplified by high-profile hacks such as multi-signature wallets, robust private key management with offline storage, real-time monitoring systems, and proactive threat detection to identify malicious behaviors before attacks escalate.
By prioritizing education, collaboration, and security innovation, we can significantly reduce these vulnerabilities and foster a safer Web3 ecosystem”. Deddy stated
The report postulated some solutions that would go a long way in mitigating hacks and exploits in the industry. They include Dynamic risk assessment, Pig Butchering protection, and leveraging technologies like AI to mitigate risk associated with crypto transactions.
