Cybersecurity experts from PeckShield have reported that a whopping $35.5 million worth of cryptocurrencies were stolen in February. The largest number of successful hacks, a total of 141, occurred on February 11th.
As per the analysis, the biggest amount that hackers could steal from one project was $9.2 million, which affected around 25 MyAlgo crypto wallets on the Algorand blockchain.
The hackers managed to withdraw more than 19.5 million ALGO coins and over 3.5 million USDC tokens, while cryptocurrency exchange ChangeNOW was able to freeze assets worth $1.5 million.
The second-most damaging hack in February was the $9 million hack of the Platypus platform’s crypto protocol, where an unknown person was able to withdraw assets from the main pool. This caused the stablecoin Platypus USD to lose its peg to the US dollar, falling by 52.2% to $0.47.
However, the French police arrested two suspects in connection with the Platypus protocol hack a few days later, and crypto assets worth 210,000 euros were seized from them.
Other notable thefts in February included $5.1 million stolen from the cryptocurrency investment project Shata Capital, $3.65 million from the dForce DeFi protocol, and $3 million from Orion Protocol, a liquidity aggregator for DeFi platforms and decentralized exchanges.
While the total amount stolen in February – $35.5 million – was almost ten times less than that stolen in February of the previous year, analysts still consider it a significant rise from January 2023, when hackers managed to steal $8.8 million in cryptocurrency.
In another report submitted to the DPRK Sanctions Committee, the United Nations revealed that North Korean hackers stole more crypto assets in 2022 than in any other year.
UN analysts have determined that North Korean hackers were responsible for last year’s theft of between $630 million and over $1 billion in crypto assets after attacking the networks of foreign aerospace and defense companies.