The crypto heists to date are Poly Network, Cream Finance, BadgerDAO, Vulcan Forged and Bitmart.
Poly Network
In August 2021, a hacker exploited a vulnerability in Poly Network’s infrastructure and stole funds totaling more than $600 million. They didn’t get away with their reward, though, in an odd twist. Instead, the hacker approached the platform and agreed to return the majority of the funds, except $33 million in Tether (USDT) that had been frozen by the issuers.
But the saga didn’t end there: $200 million of the stolen assets were locked away in an account that required the hacker’s password, according to Poly Network. The hacker initially refused to hand over the hacked crypto.
That is, until Poly Network pleaded with them to release it, gave them a $500,000 reward for discovering the system flaw, and even offered them a job! Poly Network later revealed that the private key had been handed to them by “Mr. White Hat.”
Cream Finance
Not only did hackers steal $130 million in the October 2021 incident related to robbing a cryptocurrency, but it was also Cream Finance’s third attack of the year. Hackers took $37 million in February 2021 and $19 million in August 2021.
In the most recent attack, hackers used what was deemed a flaw in the DeFi platform’s flash lending system. On the Ethereum network, they were able to take all of Cream Finance’s tokens and assets, totaling $130 million.
BadgerDAO
A hacker succeeded in stealing assets from multiple cryptocurrency wallets on the DeFi network, BadgerDAO, in December 2021. The problem is thought to have started on November 10 when a malicious script was injected into the website’s user interface.
Users’ transactions may have been intercepted while the script was active. The attacker took 896 BTC valued at roughly $50 million at that time.
Vulcan Forged
In December 2021, hackers stole $135 million from Vulcan Forged, a blockchain gaming startup. They stole private keys to 96 separate wallets before draining 4.5 million PYR tokens from them.
Bitmart
In December 2021, a hack of Bitmart’s hot wallet resulted in the theft of about $200 million. At first, it was thought that $100 million had been stolen via the Ethereum blockchain, but additional research found that another $96 million had been stolen via the Binance Smart Chain blockchain.
Over 20 tokens were taken, including altcoins such as BSC-USD, Binance Coin (BNB), BNBBPay (BPay), and Safemoon, as well as substantial quantities of Moonshot (MOONSHOT), Floki Inu (FLOKI) and BabyDoge (BabyDoge).