Hacker attacks caused $1.18 billion in losses to the crypto industry in the third quarter, with 77% of the total losses stemming from vulnerabilities in vendors and infrastructure.

Security firm Hacken reports that in Q3 2026, the crypto industry recorded 107 hacking attacks, with total losses reaching $1.18 billion—the highest quarterly loss since Q1 2025. Of this, roughly $906 million (77% of total losses) was linked to breaches of third-party vendors or development tools, components with publicly disclosed fixes not yet deployed, and un-audited elements. The quarter’s losses were driven by four major incidents: Bitget’s hack caused ~$387 million in losses, Liquid Network lost ~$320 million, the Tectonic incident involved ~$120 million, and a Coldcard firmware bug resulted in ~$115 million in damages. While third-party infrastructure issues accounted for the largest loss sum, smart contracts remained the most common attack vector, with 71 incidents leading to ~$228 million in losses. On loss recovery: Approximately $387 million was retrieved or reversed via rollbacks, representing 33% of total losses; another ~$410 million was covered by operators’ own funds, including the $387 million from Bitget’s user protection fund. Around $384 million (32% of total losses) remained unrecovered and uninsured. Hacken advises the industry to enhance security audits of critical components, including third-party vendors, development tools, oracles, cross-chain bridges, custodial systems, and signing permissions.