The Solana blockchain ecosystem has been attacked by unknown hackers, who have siphoned out roughly $8 million from around 8,000 hot wallets — Phantom, Slope and TrustWallet
Users on Twitter user said the attacker targeted the native token SOL and stablecoin USD (USDC). Accounts that have been inactive for over six months were said to be the primary targets.
PeckShield Alert, a blockchain security and data analytics company, said the widespread hack on Solana wallets is likely due to the “supply chain issue”, exploited to steal user keys from wallets. The loss is estimated to be $8 million, it added.
Addressing the hack, the Solana network said approximately 7,767 wallets have been affected. “Engineers are currently working with multiple security researchers and ecosystem teams to identify the root cause of the exploit, which is unknown at this time,” it tweeted.
Hardware walletsv
The network said there’s no evidence of hardware wallets being impacted. Hardware wallets are a form of offline storage that stores the user’s private keys in a secure hardware device. Solana has advised users to use hardware wallets. “Wallets drained should be treated as compromised, and abandoned,” it said.
Wallet companies Phantom and Slope have also issued a statement confirming they were investigating the matter.
The value of the SOL token dropped by 8 per cent as a result of the hack’s revelation. Since then, the token has recovered and is now trading at $39.90, down 0.8 percent in the last 24 hours, according to Coingecko.
The attack on Solana comes a day after Nomad Bridge was hacked, resulting in a wipe of $191 million. The Solana ecosystem has been vulnerable to hacks previously as well. $320 million was stolen from the Solana, Ethereum bridge Wormhole. The Solana stablecoin protocol cashio had also suffered an exploit leading to the collapse of its flagship stablecoin.
Published on
August 03, 2022
