Crypto Theft Drops in February as Phishing and Wallet Approval Scams Rise

Crypto-related losses plummeted to approximately $49 million in February, a significant drop from January's $385 million, according to Nominis' monthly report. A single $30 million breach involving Step Finance on the Solana blockchain accounted for a large portion of February's total. This decline suggests fewer large-scale protocol exploits occurred. Instead, attackers increasingly focused on social engineering, with phishing campaigns and authorization abuse—where victims unknowingly approve malicious wallet permissions—causing more cumulative damage than traditional smart contract exploits. Private individuals were the primary targets. These figures generally align with PeckShield's estimate of $26.5 million in losses for February. Despite improvements in industry security, such as Bybit blocking over $300 million in unauthorized withdrawals last quarter, large-scale threats persist, evidenced by the $3.4 billion lost to hacks in the previous year.

(Source：Cointelegraph)