Crypto asset theft is on the rise: the amount of funds stolen – more than $1.5 billion – has doubled in the first half of 2024, at the end of July, compared to the same period in 2023, according to Chainalysis’ Crypto Crime report. This jump is largely due, explains the American firm, to the surge in the price of cryptos, and in particular bitcoin, the most famous of digital currencies, which represents 40% of the robberies identified.
Hackers have particularly targeted centralized services, such as cryptocurrency exchanges, while in past years they focused on decentralized platforms that rarely deal in bitcoin. “Interestingly, the number of hacking incidents in 2024 only marginally exceeded that of 2023,” the authors say. The scammers are measuring their efforts and optimizing their profits.
Overall, illicit activities related to crypto assets are even tending to decrease, down 20% over the first seven months of the year. The only increase observed, modest (2%), concerns the ransomwareor ransomware. This activity involves introducing malicious software to hack computers and force victims to pay in order to regain use of their tool or data. Here too, hackers tend to carry out more profitable actions, primarily targeting large companies and critical infrastructure providers, in order to collect higher ransoms.