According to a new report from blockchain intelligence platform NOMINIS, crypto-related losses are plummeting as hackers move away from complex technical exploits and toward manipulating user behavior.
The company’s monthly security analysis found that approximately $49.3 million was lost to major crypto incidents last month, a steep drop from the approximately $385 million recorded in January.
However, researchers say the lower total does not indicate a safer environment. Instead, attackers are increasingly relying on social engineering techniques that trick users into granting access to their own money.
According to the report, authorization abuse remained the dominant attack vector, with many victims unknowingly signing malicious transactions or approving token issuance permissions that allowed attackers to empty their wallets.
“Rather than relying primarily on complex smart contract exploits, many attackers focus on manipulating transaction authorization and user behavior.”
A single infrastructure breach was responsible for the majority of February’s losses.
Solana-based DeFi platform Step Finance suffered a compromise that allowed attackers to steal approximately 261,854 SOL, worth approximately $30 million, after executives’ devices were reportedly compromised, exposing private keys or enabling malicious approvals.
In several other incidents, residential users fell victim to phishing approvals, malicious signatures, and address poisoning scams, where attackers create wallet addresses that closely resemble legitimate addresses.
In one case, a victim accidentally sent approximately $100,000 worth of USDT to a similar address after copying the wrong wallet from his transaction history.
Vulnerabilities in smart contracts were still present, but typically caused smaller financial losses compared to attacks that exploited user rights or operational security flaws.
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