According to a report by Hacken, losses from hacker attacks in the Web3 sector reached $1.98 billion in Q1 2025, which is a 96% increase compared to the same period last year.
This is reported by Business • Media
Yevgenia Broshevan, co-founder and head of business development at Hacken, noted that this quarter served as a wake-up call for the entire industry. The main causes of breaches were not bugs in smart contracts, but operational errors. The document containing the report’s data indicates that vulnerabilities in smart contracts accounted for only 0.84% of total losses. At the same time, money laundering is becoming increasingly complex.
Causes of Hacker Attacks
According to the report, hackers targeted both centralized and decentralized platforms. The main causes of breaches included:
- errors in operational processes;
- insufficient access control;
- social engineering.
“The main takeaway from the quarter is that there are no new attack techniques, but old methods remain effective. The largest losses were caused by errors in managing multi-signatures. Despite the fact that vulnerabilities in smart contracts remain a problem, the biggest losses are related to the human factor, processes, and access systems,” the report states.
The largest hacker attack in Q1 2025 was the breach of the Bybit exchange, resulting in the theft of over $1.46 billion. Hacken also reported a massive ‘rug pull’ associated with the LIBRA token, leading to losses of $300 million.
Trends in Security
Total losses from DeFi protocols amounted to $81 million, indicating a trend towards reduced losses in this segment. Experts pointed out several significant incidents, including:
- Infini — $50 million;
- zkLend — $9.6 million;
- Ionic — $12.3 million.
It is worth noting that for the third consecutive quarter, the largest attack in Web3 was related to vulnerabilities in multi-signature wallets. Specifically, in Q3 and Q4 2024, the WazirX exchange lost $235 million, while Radiant Capital lost $55 million.
“In each of these cases, Safe multi-signature infrastructure was used. The issue lies not in smart contracts, but in the lack of proper operational security, weak signing processes, and insufficient transaction verification tools,” experts noted.
Experts also emphasized that multi-signature technology is critically important and requires enhanced security infrastructure and improved access management. Multi-signature wallets continue to be targeted due to:
- compromised interfaces;
- negligence of signers;
- lack of transaction verification.
Recall that earlier, PeckShield experts reported that losses from hacker attacks on cryptocurrency projects in Q1 2025 amounted to $1.63 billion.