DefiLlama tallies 250 crypto hacks in 2026 as losses top $1B by September

Crypto hackers are working more shifts this year. They just aren’t bringing home the same paychecks. DefiLlama data shows 250 hacking incidents in 2026 through early September, with roughly $1.4B drained. That is already far more attacks than the 146 recorded across 2025, even though last year’s losses were bigger at about $2.7B. The numbers behind the surge The count kept rising after that early-September snapshot. By late September, DefiLlama’s tracker showed as many as 277 incidents for the year, with losses near $1.84B. For comparison, the full 2025 tally landed at 148 incidents and roughly $2.715B in losses. So 2026 has nearly doubled last year’s incident count with a quarter of the calendar still left. Frequency ramped up early. More than 100 incidents were logged in the first half of 2026 alone. Then the third quarter hit. Q3 2026 became the worst quarter of the year so far, with over $1.25B lost across 116 separate incidents. Two events did much of the damage. On September 6, Liquid Network lost $320M because of a flaw in how it verified its peg, meaning the system that confirms assets are properly backed failed to do its job. Then on September 24, centralized exchange Bitg...