The rising incidence of private key compromises (PKC) has caused a significant decline in the crypto industry in 2024. According to the report by CertiK alerts, this September was the 5th month this year with more than 10 reported cases, each exceeding $1 million. Four of these in September can be attributed to breaches in private keys but this area has been increasingly becoming sensitive.
Since the beginning of 2024 alone, the crypto space has faced 51 incidents that targeted private keys and as a result, $730 million were lost. This is almost twice as many as compared to the first half of 2023, which involved 31 PKC-connected events totalling almost $376m in losses.
These continual spikings portray a growing level of advancements in attacks and thus a call for better defences in the industry.
PKCs have remained one of the fastest-growing factors contributing to financial losses in the cryptocurrency environment ranking second to phishing, which remains the most prominent hacker tool. This raises a great threat to both individual and institutional investors based upon how easily such people can execute an exploit on portions of it that are poorly safeguarded.
This type of attack is especially disastrous since poorly managed, or outright compromised, private keys provide direct access to users’ funds.
How can you as users protect your assets??
As the number of PKC incidents increased, the security of assets has become an important focus for crypto companies, using multi-signature wallets, key hardware management, and auditing. The industry is also experiencing calls for better practices in terms of user management of keys and effective safety measures against hacking.
Since private key compromises have overstated these losses, the crypto industry has to focus on developing security solutions to mitigate the increasing value at stake.
