Risk Assessments/Management, Breach, Application security

‘Unsophisticated’ blockchain, DeFi attacks incur significant losses

Sixty-five major cyberattacks against blockchain and decentralized platforms last year have resulted in $1.8 billion in losses, even though 90% of the intrusions were deemed to be "unsophisticated," ZDNet reports. Bishop Fox researchers identified that smart contract vulnerabilities were the most prevalent attack vector in DeFi-targeted attacks last year, followed by protocol and design flaws, wallet compromises, rug pull and exit scams, key exposures, and frontend hacks. "We can see that in most cases, the attack came from a vulnerability in smart contracts or in the very logic of the protocol. This is not surprising for a recent technology that may lack a certain technical hindsight on the implementation of security measures," said the report, which also noted that already known vulnerabilities, fork-contained bugs, and sophisticated attacks were most commonly used in exploiting smart contracts. Increasing attacks against blockchain and DeFi platforms could be mitigated through extensive auditing and pre-production evaluations, according to the report.

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