Nearly $500 million in cryptocurrency was stolen from more than 332,000 victims in 2024 by means of wallet drainer malware, anti-scam firm Scam Sniffer says.
Wallet drainers trick victims into signing malicious transactions, which results in their assets being stolen.
Last year, wallet drainer malware caused losses of approximately $494 million, marking a 67% year-over-year increase, and the largest single theft was of $55.48 million.
Scam Sniffer identified over 332,000 drained addresses, up 3.7% from the previous year, and says that only 30 incidents resulted in losses of more than $1 million each, for a total of $171 million.
The largest number of wallet drainer malware attacks was observed during the first quarter of the year, when they made 175,000 victims and caused losses of $187.2 million.
Over 90,000 victims were identified in the second and third quarter of the year, when the combined losses reached $257 million, and an additional 30,000 victims were observed in the fourth quarter of the year, when the losses totaled $51 million.
Although the attacks were more frequent at the beginning of 2024, the two largest attacks last year, of $55.48 million and $32.51 million, respectively, were observed in August and September.
“Q1 showed the highest phishing website activity for the year, explaining the high theft losses during this period. Due to market adjustments and the exit of major Drainers like Pink and Inferno, overall activity levels in the second half of the year were lower than in the first half,” Scam Sniffer notes.
Recent data from Chainalysis has revealed that cryptocurrency theft increased overall last year, when more than $2.2 billion in assets was stolen. In December, the US blamed North Korean state-sponsored hackers for a $308 million theft from Bitcoin.DMM.com.
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