Crypto Scams Declined in February, However Nonetheless Tens of millions Have been Misplaced

Crypto exploits declined by greater than 90% in February, with digital asset thieves siphoning simply $35.7 million throughout the ecosystem.

The sharp decline marks the quietest month for crypto safety since March 2025, offering a quick reprieve for a sector routinely battered by nine-figure hacks.

Phishing and Oracle Assaults Linger Regardless of the Sharp Fall in Crypto Theft

Information compiled by blockchain safety agency CertiK revealed a drastic month-over-month drop from January’s staggering losses.

In the meantime, the figures additionally signify an enormous year-over-year contraction. Final yr’s February was dominated by a historic $1.5 billion exploit on the Bybit alternate, an anomaly that closely skewed annual safety metrics.

#CertiKStatsAlert 🚨

Combining all of the incidents in February we’ve confirmed ~$35.7M misplaced to exploits with ~$8.5M of the full attributed to phishing.

This determine is the bottom month-to-month loss since March 2025.

Extra particulars under 👇 pic.twitter.com/7McXeoH3BR

— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) February 28, 2026

Regardless of the broader market slowdown in illicit exercise, focused assaults nonetheless drained hundreds of thousands from decentralized finance protocols.

The one largest crypto exploit incident occurred on February 22 on the Stellar community.

In response to Quill Audits, a hacker exploited the community-managed YieldBlox Mix pool. The attacker stole greater than $10 million by way of a traditional thin-liquidity oracle manipulation assault.

By executing a single irregular commerce within the extremely illiquid USTRY/USDC market, the attacker artificially inflated the token’s worth by an element of 100.

This tricked the protocol’s valuation system, permitting the attacker to execute large undercollateralized borrowing.

A day earlier, on February 21, the Web-of-Issues blockchain venture IoTeX suffered a significant breach after a personal key was compromised.

Whereas CertiK estimated the losses at practically $9 million, the IoTeX crew claimed the stolen quantity was nearer to $2 million.

Safety researchers famous the attacker used the compromised key to entry the token secure, shortly swapped the stolen property for ETH and routed them to Bitcoin utilizing cross-chain bridges.

Rounding out the highest three was a $2.2 million exploit of Foom.Money, a privateness protocol.

On this assault, the hacker reportedly exploited a cryptographic flaw to forge zkSNARK proofs. This allowed them to create pretend digital credentials that the protocol accepted, enabling the withdrawal of enormous volumes of tokens.

Crypto Phishing Assaults Stay a Concern

Past good contract vulnerabilities, phishing stays a persistent risk, accounting for precisely $8.5 million of February’s complete losses.

The crypto phishing sector has flourished not too long ago, pushed by the rise of professionalized “drainer-as-a-service” suppliers like Angel Drainer and Inferno Drainer.

These platforms permit scammers to execute large-scale malicious operations with minimal technical experience. They supply fraudsters with an entire toolkit, together with cloned web sites, misleading social media accounts, and automatic good contract scripts.

In alternate for offering this illicit infrastructure, the operators take a proportion of all stolen funds.