On July 24, 2024, MonoSwap, a decentralized exchange and staking platform, announced that it suffered a malicious hack and warned users not to stake or add additional funds at the moment.
In the announcement, MonoSwap also warned users to withdraw their funds from the platform immediately to avoid losses and not to interact with a malicious link, which the protocol identified in a social media post.
According to the platform, on July 23, 2024, one of its developers accidentally installed a malicious phishing application and was lured into a call with scammers pretending to be venture capitalists. At some point during the call, scammers installed malicious software onto the developer's computer, which reportedly had access to all the platform's wallets and contracts. This allowed the hackers to withdraw most of the staked liquidity on the platform.
At the time of this writing, MonoSwap is investigating the incident and said it is "trying to work with venture capitalists to build a better future for Monoswap," before stating "Unfortunate things happened and now we are trying our best to solve this issue."
Crypto hacks on the rise
On July 11, 2024, CoinGecko co-founder and chief operating officer Bobby Ong warned the crypto community that crypto hacks were increasing, cautioning users not to interact with crypto over the next several days.
Related: $235M WazirX exchange hack has implications for India’s crypto industry.
Ong believes the sudden rise in attacks is due to Google's sale of its domain business to Squarespace, explaining that the forced migration of the domains removed two-factor security authentication and created a security vulnerability that is being exploited now.
Recent high-profile examples
Since the CoinGecko co-founder issued his warning, several high-profile hacks and exploits have occurred. Onchain sleuth ZackXBT recently sounded the alarm about Compound Finance's website, which was redirecting users to a phishing page and has since been fixed by the Compound Finance team.
On July 18, 2024, popular Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX was hacked, leaving $235 million drained from the exchange by hackers believed to be tied to the North Korean Lazurus hacking group.
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