According to blockchain security firms, the recent attack on Orbit Chain’s cross-chain bridge resulted in nearly $100 million of cryptocurrency being stolen in December 2023.
On January 1st, PeckShield, a blockchain security firm, reported that the exploit on the Orbit Bridge, which amounted to $81.5 million, made December the fifth-highest month for hacks in 2023.
The incident also ranked as the ninth-largest hack targeting a cross-chain bridge in the past three years.
Orbit Bridge is a bridging service provided by Orbit Chain, a cross-chain protocol launched in South Korea in 2018. On December 31st at 8:52 pm UTC, it was confirmed that the system had been hacked due to an unauthorized breach of access.
In response, the Orbit Chain team requested major global cryptocurrency exchanges to freeze the stolen assets and announced that they are working closely with law enforcement agencies to track down and freeze the stolen assets.
Estimates from blockchain security firms PeckShield, CertiK, and Beosin suggest that the total losses from hacks, scams, and exploits in 2023 ranged between $1.51 billion and $2 billion.
September and November of 2023 were particularly devastating, with losses of over $700 million during those two months alone, according to data from PeckShield. The Mixin Network lost $200 million in September, while the largest exploits in November occurred on the Poloniex and HTX/Heco Bridges, resulting in losses of $131.4 million and $113.3 million, respectively.
Other notable hacks in 2023 included Euler Finance, which lost $197 million in March, and Multichain, which was hacked for $125 million in July.
Despite these incidents, blockchain security firm Beosin noted that there were significant declines in hacks, phishing scams, and rug pulls compared to 2022, with total losses down from approximately $4.38 billion.
The biggest decrease was seen in losses from hacks, which dropped from $3.6 billion in 2022 to $1.4 billion in 2023, a decrease of about 61.2%.