About $2bn value of cryptocurrency has been stolen throughout 13 separate cross-chain bridge hacks in line with a report by Chainalysis.
The blockchain analytics agency said that almost all of the $2bn had been stolen this 12 months with assaults on bridges accounting for 69 per cent of complete funds stolen in 2022 thus far. It added that the theft represents a significant menace to belief in blockchain know-how.
It stated, “As extra worth flows via cross-chain bridges, they turn into extra engaging victims for hackers. Much more troubling is that bridges at the moment are a high goal for North Korean-linked hackers, who — in line with our estimates — have stolen roughly $1bn value of cryptocurrency thus far this 12 months, fully from bridges and different DeFi protocols.
“For perspective, South Korea’s government-run statistical company estimates the nation earned $89m from official exports in 2020. The excellent news is that these companies can take steps to guard themselves. And within the occasion of a hack, they will leverage the transparency of blockchain know-how to analyze the movement of funds and ideally forestall attackers from cashing out their ill-gotten features.”
The agency defined that cross-chain bridges had been designed to unravel the problem of interoperability between completely different blockchains.
In keeping with it, a cross-chain bridge is a protocol that lets a person port digital asset from one blockchain to a different. It stated these bridges are a gorgeous goal as a result of they usually characteristic a central storage level of funds that again the ‘bridged’ belongings on the receiving blockchain.
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