$211 Million Worth of Crypto Drained in March in 26 Hacks: PeckShield

Blockchain security firm – PeckShield – pointed out that criminals embezzled $211.5 million worth of cryptocurrencies last month via 26 attacks.

The Euler Finance exploit accounted for most of the proceeds after hackers stole $197 million in ETH, USDC, wrapped BTC, and DAI.

Mars wasn’t all sunshine and roses

The revival of the cryptocurrency market last month and the rising prices of many digital assets seemed like great news for investors and industry supporters. However, this momentum coincided with an increase in hacking attacks.

As revealed by PeckShield, cybercriminals drained over $211 million worth of crypto in March, a significant increase from the $35.3 million lost in February.

The Euler Finance exploit that resulted in the siphoning of nearly $200 million worth of digital assets accounted for more than 93% of the total pool. Decentralized finance (DeFi) project SafeMoon class second with $8.7 million in losses, while $5.2 million left ParaSpace.

Attacks on General Bytes ATM ($1.7m), Tender.fi ($1.58m), and Swerve Finance ($1.3m) also made up the full picture.

#PeckShieldAlert ~26 exploits nabbed $211.5 million in March 2023.
Regarding the @eulerfinance feat, the estimated loss is $197 million. The exploiter returned 84,963.4 $ETH (~$152.8M) and 29.9M $DAI to the deployer, and it has already transferred 1,100 $ETH at Tornado Cash pic.twitter.com/kf2Ul4uIun

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) March 31, 2023

Euler’s financial drama

The DeFi lending protocol hit the headlines in mid-March after hackers breached its security and diverted nearly $200 million in crypto assets. The malefactor borrowed a substantial sum of money through Euler’s platform and then emptied the tokens in a so-called flash lending attack.

Shortly after, the entity Free the author to keep about $20 million if he returned the remaining funds. They were reluctant to agree to the deal and instead shuffled the crypto into Tornado Cash just hours after the proposal was made public.

However, the hacker behind the exploit, who went by the name “Jacob,” changed his stance towards the end of the month, returning over $100 million worth of ETH to the protocol. They went even further in the following days, apologize for the crime and returning more assets.