Crypto Scammers Have Been Quiet in February, Hacks Fall by 90%
Crypto exploits declined by greater than 90% in February, with digital asset thieves siphoning simply $35.7 million throughout the ecosystem.
The sharp decline marks the quietest month for crypto safety since March 2025, offering a quick reprieve for a sector routinely battered by nine-figure hacks.
Phishing and Oracle Attacks Linger Despite the Sharp Fall in Crypto Theft
Data compiled by blockchain safety agency CertiK revealed a drastic month-over-month drop from January’s staggering losses.
Meanwhile, the figures additionally symbolize a large year-over-year contraction. Last 12 months’s February was dominated by a historic $1.5 billion exploit on the Bybit exchange, an anomaly that closely skewed annual safety metrics.
Despite the broader market slowdown in illicit exercise, focused assaults nonetheless drained tens of millions from decentralized finance protocols.
The single largest crypto exploit incident occurred on February 22 on the Stellar community.
According to Quill Audits, a hacker exploited the community-managed YieldBlox Blend pool. The attacker stole greater than $10 million by way of a basic thin-liquidity oracle manipulation assault.
By executing a single irregular commerce in the extremely illiquid USTRY/USDC market, the attacker artificially inflated the token’s worth by an element of 100.
This tricked the protocol’s valuation system, permitting the attacker to execute huge undercollateralized borrowing.
A day earlier, on February 21, the Internet-of-Things blockchain challenge IoTeX suffered a major breach after a private key was compromised.
While CertiK estimated the losses at practically $9 million, the IoTeX staff claimed the stolen quantity was nearer to $2 million.
Security researchers famous the attacker used the compromised key to entry the token secure, rapidly swapped the stolen belongings for ETH and routed them to Bitcoin utilizing cross-chain bridges.
Rounding out the highest three was a $2.2 million exploit of Foom.Cash, a privateness protocol.
In this assault, the hacker reportedly exploited a cryptographic flaw to forge zkSNARK proofs. This allowed them to create pretend digital credentials that the protocol accepted, enabling the withdrawal of huge volumes of tokens.
Crypto Phishing Attacks Remain a Concern
Beyond sensible contract vulnerabilities, phishing remains a persistent threat, accounting for precisely $8.5 million of February’s whole losses.
The crypto phishing sector has flourished not too long ago, pushed by the rise of professionalized “drainer-as-a-service” providers like Angel Drainer and Inferno Drainer.
These platforms permit scammers to execute large-scale malicious operations with minimal technical experience. They present fraudsters with a whole toolkit, together with cloned web sites, misleading social media accounts, and automatic sensible contract scripts.
In trade for offering this illicit infrastructure, the operators take a share of all stolen funds.
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