Cryptocurrency pirates move away from the exploitation of vulnerabilities of intelligent contracts and targeting users with social engineering schemes, said the Cybersecurity Company Web3, Certik.
Until now, more than $ 2.1 billion has been stolen from cryptocurrency attacks in 2025, with most losses from portfolio compromises and phishing attacks, according to at Certik.
Cryptographic phishing attacks are social engineering regimes where attackers share fraudulent links to steal sensitive information from the victims, such as the private keys to cryptographic portfolios.
The growing number of social engineering attacks suggest that hackers change the attack vectors, according to Ronghui Gu, co-founder of Certik.
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Certik observed a change in attack models from intelligent contracts and blockchain infrastructure vulnerabilities to exploit gaps in human behavior, GuiTelegraph said during the daily spaces of the chain reaction to show June 2, adding:
“The majority of these $ 2.1 billion was caused by portfolio compromises, mismanagement and operational problems.”
Phishing scams cost the cryptography industry more than a billion dollars out of 296 incidents in 2024, making it the most expensive attack vector for industry, according to Certik.
Cybersecurity expert’s comments are just one month after a social engineering program has seen $ 330.7 million Bitcoin (BTC) stolen from the portfolio of an elderly American individual, April 30 reported.
Social engineering patterns and poisoning at the address require no hacking. Instead, the attackers encourage victims to send assets to fraudulent wallet addresses.
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The pirates always target the weakest link
Although the rise in social engineering schemes is a worrying sign, it can be a more robust decentralized finance protocol signal (DEFI).
“The attackers still target the weakest point,” said Gu de Certik, adding:
“Intelligent contracts or the blockchain code itself were the weakest point, but now attackers have the impression that the weakest points can come from human behavior rather than code.”
Gu has said that industry must now invest in better portfolio security, access control, real -time transactions monitoring and simulation tools to reduce future incidents.
The share of the lion of the stolen value in 2025 came from the exchange of balance sheets of $ 1.4 billion on February 21, when the infamous North Korean group Lazarus organized the greatest feat in cryptographic history.
This single incident represented more than 60% of the lost value in all crypto hacks in 2024, when the industry saw $ 2.3 billion stolen on 760 ONCHAIN security incidents, according to At the annual Hack3D report of Certik.
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