Decentralized finance (DeFi) investors should buckle themselves up for another big year of exploits and attacks as new projects enter the market and hackers become more sophisticated.<\/p>\n
Executives from blockchain security and auditing firms HashEx, Beosin and Apostro were interviewed for Drofa\u2019s An Overview of DeFi Security In 2022<\/em> report shared exclusively with Cointelegraph. <\/p>\n The executives were asked about the reason behind a significant increase in DeFi hacks last year, and were asked whether this will continue through 2023.<\/p>\n Tommy Deng, managing director of blockchain security firm Beosin, said while DeFi protocols will continue to strengthen and improve security, he also admitted that \u201cthere is no absolute security,\u201d stating:<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as there is interest in the crypto market, the number of hackers will not decrease.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Deng added that many new DeFi projects \u201cdon\u2019t go through complete security testing before going live.”<\/p>\n Additionally, a significant amount of projects are now exploring the use of\u00a0cross-chain bridges, which were a prime target for exploiters last year, leading to $1.4 billion stolen across six exploits in 2022.<\/p>\n The comments mirror those of blockchain security firm CertiK, who told Cointelegraph on Jan. 3 that it doesn\u2019t \u201canticipate a respite in exploits, flash loans or exit scams\u201d in the coming year.<\/p>\n In particular, CertiK noted the likelihood of \u201cfurther attempts from hackers targeting bridges in 2023\u201d citing the historically high returns from attacks in 2022.<\/p>\n Crypto auditing firm HashEx founder and CEO, Dmitry Mishunin, said \u201chackers have gotten smarter, gained more experience, and learned how to look for bugs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe crypto industry is still relatively new, and everyone is growing with each other, so it\u2019s difficult to get too far ahead of bad actors.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n He added the amount of value in some DeFi projects made the industry \u201cvery attractive\u201d to malicious actors, and that the number of hacks \u201cis only going to grow going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Mishuin said these attacks may even spread outside of DeFi, with attackers setting their sights on \u201ccrypto exchanges and banks\u201d that enter the market offering \u201cmore secure solutions for storing digital assets.\u201d<\/p>\n Related: <\/em><\/strong>Crypto\u2019s recovery requires more aggressive solutions to fraud<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Smart contract security and auditing firm Apostro co-founder, Tim Ismiliaev gave a more hopeful take, however, as he expects the space to \u201cmature over the next five years, and new best practices for securing decentralized finance protocols will emerge.\u201d<\/p>\n Interestingly, both Mishunin and Deng noted that many of the post-incident reports provided by blockchain security firms often fail to reach their target audience \u2014 blockchain developers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people that read such analyses are average investors that are concerned about their money. Actual blockchain developers are too busy coding; they don\u2019t have time to read stuff like that,\u201d said Mishunin.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Deng said the reports are usually about \u201cevent-based vulnerabilities and related recommendations,\u201d so doesn\u2019t often help other developers as they might still be vulnerable to other exploits.<\/p>\n He admitted, however, that reports on \u201cgeneral vulnerabilities\u201d in DeFi \u201ctend to do a good job of ramping up protection.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe reentrancy vulnerabilities are now not as common as they used to be.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nToo long; didn\u2019t read<\/h3>\n