NEW YORK — Two hacker groups are responsible for a majority of the cybercrime carried out against cryptocurrency exchanges, alleges a new report. Combined, the two groups have stolen roughly $1 billion in cryptocurrency.
According to Bitcoin.com, digital surveillance company Chainalysis identified two groups behind many of the hacks in the field in its latest "crypto crime" report.
Analysts say on average, each hack from either of the two groups involved around $90 million per incident.
Chainalysis says the first hacking group is a "giant, tightly controlled organization" that could be driven in part by non-monetary goals. The second group is smaller, less organized and more brazen, but primarily focused on money.
According to the report, at least 50 percent of stolen cryptocurrency were converted into hard currency through some type of conversion service within 112 days of the hacks.
Chainalysis said 64.3 percent of the funds were sent to centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, 11.9 percent to peer-to-peer exchanges and the other 23.8 percent used conversion services such as mixing services, bitcoin ATMs and gambling sites.
The report found, "exchanges are regularly processing the stolen funds, allowing the hackers to convert the funds to traditional currencies or other cryptocurrencies."

This is due to the fact that the stolen funds look like they are coming from the legitimate owners to the exchanges not hacked.

It can also be difficult for exchanges to tell if cryptocurrency has been stolen without having specialized investigation software.