A New Wave Of Crypto Hacks Emerges

Reports emerging from PeckShield, a blockchain security startup, indicate that there was a 27% increase in hacks targeting cryptocurrency in July 2025 from the total in the previous month.

The industry faced 17 large-scale attacks from cyber-criminals over July, which cost the sector $142 million in losses, up from the $111 million losses sustained in June 2025.

This level of security threat highlights an increasing concern about the safety of crypto and questions the overall security measures that are currently in place for digital assets, with consistently high rates of hacking seemingly apparent. 

The good news is that the levels of hacks have decreased from last year. 2024 racked up a massive total of $266 million lost by cryptocurrencies to hackers.

However, the majority of this, around $230 million, was due to the immense WazirX Hack. Despite this, we are only halfway through 2025 and it seems that hackers are set to acquire a whole lot more money through malicious activity in the industry by the end of the year.

So far $2.47 billion has been stolen by scams and hacks this year alone. This combines with wallet compromises, resulting in $1.7 billion of losses and $410 million lost through phishing activities. 

Ways To Stay Safe

Whilst you want to rely on the crypto platforms and exchanges utilizing their security measures, there are personal ways that you can try and remain as safe as possible when dealing with cryptocurrencies.

Making sure you are following basic digital age security measures, including two-factor authentication and using a secure network, is a great place to start.

Equally adopting tactics such as a hardware wallet for long-term storage options, being aware aware of regular and potent phishing attacks along with keeping your details as sparse as possible such as opting for no KYC exchanges or keeping your seed phrase offline can be great ways of putting hackers off and stopping them in their tracks before they get any money out of you or the exchange that you are operating on.

By keeping your personal details away from suspicious characters by using safe, anonymous exchanges, you are less likely to fall victim to hackers or scams. 

The Big Attack Of The Month

As for the attacks suffered by crypto exchanges this year, CoinDCX suffered the largest breach. CoinDCX is one of India’s leading crypto exchanges and has reported losses to hackers of around $45 million in mid-July.

Initially, the exchange seemed to suggest that hackers gained access through a server breach; however, later the issue was linked to social engineering and malware.

Bengaluru Police investigated the breach and found that it appeared to have been facilitated through hackers impersonating recruitment officers for the exchange by getting CoinDCX employees to download malicious software onto their computers, where they would go on to funnel funds out of the exchange from operational wallets to 6 different international cryptocurrency wallets.

The police made an arrest and suggested they suspect him of having been used in this scam, as an innocent player, to gain access to the exchange details. 

Other Attacks In July

Woo X experienced a security breach similar to that of CoinDCX, but only suffered losses of around $13 million. The second biggest breach victim of the month was GMX.

The decentralized perpetual exchange suffered at the hands of a re-entrancy exploit, which is a clever way to exploit older smart contracts. This allowed the hacker to gain access to around $42 million.

However, in a turn of events, the hacker returned around 10,000 ETH and 10.5M FRAX (which equates to around $40 million) in return for a white-hat bounty of $5 million. 

Shifting Hacker Pattern

One of the most concerning things about these hacks for industry leaders is the nature of their pathway and pattern.

It seems that in recent months, attackers have switched their focus from targeting flaws in the blockchain, which can be hard to navigate and easier to defend against and instead focused their efforts on scamming personnel involved in the industry, along with targeting the off-chain framework that these platforms operate within.

This is harder to defend against for crypto businesses, particularly when hackers are targeting humans in the field, as humans are far more fallible than the strong technological barriers that have been put in place. 

Industry Response

To combat the shift in hackers’ patterns along with the continual threat of cyber attacks to crypto exchanges, the industry is taking an active role in continued efforts to improve the robustness of its security measures.

Exchanges are continually developing techniques to defend against the different threats by continually remaining updated with the hackers’ tactics.

For many exchanges, this is taking the form of better internal security through staff training, hardware improvements and restricted internal access control to prevent socially engineered attacks.

This places the focus on negating the chance of human error. Exchanges are also focusing on continually improving their technological security defenses by implementing advanced monitoring systems and rapid response infrastructure to act as quickly as possible should any hacks bypass their security.

Some companies are also backing cyber insurance to cover themselves should they fall victim to attacks, but the uptake is limited, and response strategies still waver slightly.