Taking apart the 4 biggest crypto hacks in August with exploits

News of new bridge hacks and other DeFi hacks make them seem commonplace, so much so that we're about to do an overview of exploits for August.

According to Chainanalysis, vulnerabilities in cryptocurrency bridge protocols and smart contracts are the top hacking problem in the crypto industry. Certainly the most tidbit for hackers.

Right now, bridges are taking on two-thirds of all crypto hacks. In August, 263 million dollars worth of crypto was lost due to hacks. 

First, not in terms of value but in terms of amount, is the Nomad bridge exploit, a devastating attack that stole $200 million worth of cryptocurrency from users' accounts on August 1. The uniqueness lies in using more than 300 addresses to withdraw the stolen funds (sort of a lot).

The second was the Acala Network hack. Stolen assets: $52 million.

On August 14, Twitter user 0xTaysama noticed suspicious activity on the Polkadot DeFi-based platform Acala, suggesting that there may have been a hack. 

They also named the potential cause of the attack "a bug in the iBTC/AUSD pool." The hacker took advantage of the bug to mine 1.2 billion aUSD, a native token of the Acala network. Because of this, the price of the token dropped by 90 percent.

The third was Solana. About 8,000 hot mobile wallets fell victim to the attack, which stole $5.8 million in SOL, USDC, and others on Aug. 2-3. TrustWallet, Phantom, and Slope were the wallets connected to the Solana ecosystem (SOL). 

The attackers appear to have gained access to user signatures, indicating that some third-party services may have been compromised by the supply chain attack.

The fourth hack for August was the ZB.com exchange. Most hilarious in that it positioned itself as all-time cool and said explicitly, "the world's most secure digital exchange" and managing more than $1 billion in daily transactions, was hacked on August 2 for $4.8 million. 

20 digital assets, including USDT, MATIC, AAVE, and SHIB, were moved off the exchange and sold for Ethereum shortly after that on various decentralized exchanges, PeckShield data shows.