Crypto audits after $1.18 billion in losses: “The problem is always scope”

An audit badge on the website of an exchange or a protocol reads like a guarantee. The security firm Hacken has now set out how little it covers when it matters: in the third quarter of 2026, attacks on the crypto market cost $1.18 billion across 107 incidents, and $906.8 million of that fell on components that were never on the table at the last security audit. That is 77 percent of the quarter's losses. Co-founder Andrii Matiukhin summed it up to CoinDesk: “The problem is always scope”. For investors, that does not mean audits are worthless. It means a badge answers a different question from the one you are asking. You want to know whether your balance is safe. What was usually examined is whether one particular smart contract was clean at one particular moment. This article shows where the gap sits in figures, which cases tore it open over the summer, and how to tell a meaningful audit report from a decorative one. $1.18 billion across 107 incidents: what Hacken counts for the third quarter The figure appears in the quarterly report of the audit firm Hacken, which CoinDesk reported on October 18, 2026. $1.18 billion in damage spread across 107 separate incidents, 55 percent more...