6 months ago
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The Base chain appeared to be targeted more in April as a report states a 145% monthly increase in crypto thefts.
Coinbase’s Base chain has suffered an increased amount of crypto theft over the last month, according to data from the real-time Web3 anti-scam platform Scam Sniffer. According to the platform, Base saw a heavy 145% increase in scam activity for April.
Thefts Increased on Base
Scam Sniffer posted a thread on X with details of its April Phishing Report. In the thread’s second post, the platform wrote that the Base chain saw a substantial increase in theft from the previous month despite an overall reduction in the sector. The post also noted that 2 of the top 10 largest single thefts in the month occurred on Base. The hacks accounted for 21% of the total theft recorded in April.
Overall, Base has seen an increase of about 1,900% in scammer activity since January. This resulted in about $170,000 lost to phishing scams.
In general, the anti-scam intelligence platform’s report shows that a total of 34,619 victims lost more than $38.6 million in April. This is a 46% reduction compared to figures from March. ScamSniffer also wrote that 88% of all assets stolen in the month were ERC20 tokens. The thefts stemmed from phishing signatures, including Uniswap Permit2, IncreaseAllowance, and Permit. According to the report, scammers seem to prefer swindling people by creating fake Twitter accounts and posting deceptive comments.
Warning users to be careful and vigilant, the platform also highlights the use of wallet drainers, which are illicit malware tools designed to quickly drain wallets after gaining illegal access. Unfortunately, although several wallets have increased phishing alerts for several known signatures, the Phishing Report states that wallet drainers have found ways to circumvent these alerts.
One of the largest hacks is the Hedgey Finance hack, which lost about $47 million. Last month, a hacker stole millions of dollars worth of Arbitrum (ARB) tokens and moved some of the funds to the Bybit exchange. Another major hack is the Fix Float exchange’s loss of $3 million worth of crypto tokens, traced to a third-party provider. There was also Grand Base, which lost $2.67 million to hackers.
Q1 Thefts
According to a report from on-chain security company CertiK, there were 223 exploits in the first quarter of 2024. All of these breaches resulted in more than $502 million worth of crypto assets stolen. CertiK’s Hack3d report notes that the figure is a 54% increase over the total recorded in the first quarter of 2023 when $326 million worth of crypto was stolen.
CertiK noted that January was the worst month for users. The month ended with $193 million worth of crypto assets lost across 78 on-chain exploits. The most common hack channel was from compromised private keys, accounting for $239 million lost over 26 incidents. Code vulnerabilities accounted for $42.6 million lost to 47 incidents, while $68.3 million worth of crypto was lost to 34 exit scams. Interestingly, hackers returned more than $779 million worth of crypto assets in the quarter. Most were from the Munchables incident.
Last year, a report from blockchain security platform Immunefi concluded that scammers and hackers made away with $1.8 billion. The report blamed North Korea-linked hacker collective Lazarus Group for 17% of the losses.
