November saw $343 million lost to crypto hacks and fraud cases: Immunefi

November has clocked up the highest monthly crypto losses of 2023 so far, with over $343 million lost due to hacks and fraud, according to the latest report from web3 bug bounty platform Immunefi.

This month’s losses represent more than a 15 times increase from October’s exploits, which were recorded at approximately $22 million. In total, over $1.75 billion has been lost to crypto hacks and rug pulls year-to-date across 296 incidents, Immunefi said.

CeFi versus DeFi

Notably, November saw a shift in focus for crypto attacks. Centralized finance (CeFi) platforms became the main victims, overtaking decentralized finance (DeFi) by total funds lost.

During the month, DeFi accounted for 46.2% ($158.6 million) of the losses over 37 incidents and CeFi 53.8% ($184.4 million) over four, primarily led by high-profile attacks on platforms like Poloniex, HTX (formerly Huobi) and Kronos Research. This compares to 72.9% of losses attributed to DeFi exploits in Immunefi’s Q3 report.

Hacks continued to dominate crypto attacks over fraud, with more than $335 million lost to hacking incidents in November across 18 incidents. Some 23 fraud incidents resulted in losses worth nearly $7.5 million, according to Immunefi.

BNB Chain and Ethereum most targeted

BNB Chain and Ethereum remained the most targeted chains in November, suffering the majority of the total losses at a combined 83%. 

BNB Chain suffered the most individual attacks, with 22 incidents — representing 53.7% of the losses. Ethereum witnessed 12 attacks, representing 29.3% of exploited funds. Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, Fantom and Heco Chain made up the remainder of the incidents.

Crypto losses November 2023. Image: Immunefi.

As a vulnerability reporting platform, Immunefi says it has paid out more than $85 million in bounties to date and saved over $25 billion in user funds across protocols like Chainlink, The Graph, Synthetix, and MakerDAO. In September, Immunefi launched on-chain vaults as its first step towards decentralizing the bug bounty platform.