August Security Report | Phishing Scams Sweep $290 Million, Unveiling On-Chain Security Offense and Defense
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August Security Report | Phishing Scams Sweep $290 Million, Unveiling On-Chain Security Offense and Defense
In August, blockchain security incidents across the web caused cumulative losses of approximately $316 million, an increase of 9.3% compared to the previous month.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insights
In August, total losses from blockchain security incidents across the web amounted to approximately 316 million USD, a 9.3% increase month-on-month.
Phishing scams alone accounted for 93.37% of total losses, exceeding 296 million USD. Phishing tweets often contain traps—never click on unverified links. Users should learn to use Web3 on-chain tools to mitigate risks, establish their own security protocols, and strictly adhere to them to ensure fund safety.
REKT incidents accounted for 5.97% of losses, totaling approximately 18.93 million USD. RugPull incidents accounted for 0.19% of losses, totaling about 590,000 USD.
Largest Security Incident – Phishing Scam
On August 19, a suspicious transfer involving 4,064 BTC, worth approximately 238 million USD, occurred. The funds were quickly transferred to multiple accounts including ThorChain and eXch.
As of August 27, 205,000 USD has been recovered.
Largest Security Incident – Private Key Leak
On August 7, Nexera suffered a breach after malware stole its contract management credentials, resulting in the theft of 47.2 million NXRA tokens, causing losses of approximately 1.5 million USD.
Largest Security Incident – REKT
On August 6, the gaming blockchain Ronin was attacked due to an incorrectly initialized bridge contract upgrade. The attacker withdrew approximately 4,000 ETH and 2 million USDC from the bridge, valued at around 12 million USD.
By August 7, white-hat hackers had returned assets worth 12 million USD and received an additional 500,000 USD bug bounty from the project team.
Largest Security Incident – RugPull
On August 16, SIGMA on Solana experienced a RugPull. The deployer sold their tokens and obtained 2,381.6 SOL, resulting in losses of approximately 330,000 USD.
Case Analysis
On August 6, the gaming blockchain Ronin was suspected of being attacked. The attacker withdrew approximately 4,000 ETH and 2 million USDC from the bridge, valued at around 12 million USD.
Process Analysis:
1) The Ronin team mistakenly upgraded the Axie Infinity: Ronin Bridge V2 contract, replacing the implementation from MainchainGatewayV3 (old) to MainchainGatewayV3 (new), and called the initializeV4 method of MainchainGatewayV3 (new) to initialize;
2) The attacker discovered that _totalOperatorWeight in MainchainGatewayV3 (new) was not initialized and remained at 0, allowing them to bypass signature verification during fund withdrawal. The attacker submitted arbitrary signature data and directly withdrew 3,996.09375 ETH;
3) In the second attack transaction, the attacker again submitted arbitrary signatures and directly withdrew 1,998,046 USDC;
4) The attacker swapped 1,998,046 USDC for 796 WETH via Uniswap.
OKLink Tips
August saw massive losses due to phishing scams. OKLink reminds everyone: never disclose your private keys or recovery phrases to anyone. Think twice before connecting your wallet. Before authorizing, use OKLink’s Token Approval Management Tool to prevent risks proactively—keep contract risks under control with multiple layers of protection.
👉 https://www.oklink.com/zh-hans/approval
Everyone should establish their own security operation procedures and strictly follow them to safeguard their funds.
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