Cybercriminals are now taking advantage of the ongoing craze around cryptocurrencies to trick potential victims and steal their digital money. In fact, a report by Chainalysis revealed that hackers have exploited vulnerabilities within crypto platforms or used traditional scamming methods like ‘rug pull’, mooching off over $7.7 billion (Rs 58,698 crore approx.) worth of cryptocurrency from victims in 2021. Here we list all the major cryptocurrency scams that occurred this year.
Poly Network
In August 2021, hackers pulled off one of the biggest ever cryptocurrency heists stealing $613 million in digital coins from token-swapping platform Poly Network. However, the hackers returned $260 million worth of tokens in less than 24 hours.
For the uninitiated, Poly Network is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that facilitates peer-to-peer transactions enabling users to transfer or swap cryptocurrencies across multiple blockchains. For example, a customer could use Poly Network to transfer tokens such as Bitcoin from the Ethereum blockchain to the Binance Smart Chain, perhaps looking to access a specific application.
The attackers stole funds in more than 12 different cryptocurrencies, including Ether and a type of Bitcoin, according to Chainalysis.
Interestingly, in the beginning, the hacker refused to hand the stolen crypto assets over. That was until Poly Network requested for them to release it, coughed up $500,000 as a gesture for finding the system vulnerability,…
