During the night, more than 8000 Solana wallets have been emptied, in what appears to be a massive attack that takes advantage of a vulnerability in a blockchain network that competes with Ethereum. From 2 am, the equivalent of more than $6 million was stolen to investors everywhere, who seem to have an inactive crypto account in common in recent months.
The peculiarity of an operation of this magnitude is that at this time no progress in research has made it possible to understand what is happening. We don’t even know who is the author of these crypto-currency thefts, nor the loophole through which the thieves would manage to extract Solana’s accounts. So far, 4 addresses have been identified, but the progress of the research does not allow us to find out who is behind it. On Twitter, a user noted that addresses were seen in late 2021 on Binance.
Solana’s spokesperson said this in the press release “Engineers from multiple ecosystems, with the help of multiple security companies, are investigating depleted wallets on Solana. There is no evidence that hardware wallets are affected”. Solana added, in an update this morning, that it had ruled out the only possibility that the error came from its own network.
Binance funded scammer wallet 7 months agohttps://t.co/5gQbObcsg4 https://t.co/sco5SPBrne pic.twitter.com/AL6Hm4F3R3
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) August 3, 2022
Let’s remind you, Solana is currently the ninth cryptocurrency in the world in the ranking of the largest capitalizations. The project aims to compete with Ethereum by offering a blockchain and a much faster network in processing operations, so that DeFi projects can be implemented there more simply and economically. But for many, the Solana project is just an empty shell. The creators of Solana Labs are Qualcomm alumni.
Solana is a blockchain based on Proof Of Stake (POS) technology. However, what makes it unique is the use of an additional technological layer: Proof Of History (POH). PoH is a new way of thinking about the network.
Solana wallets of hacking victims
Overall, the accounts emptied are the Phantom and Slope accounts. In continuing to support Solana via Twitter, we learn that most of the targeted accounts inactive accounts since some time. The spokesman added that “Much remains unknown at this point – except that hardware wallets are not affected. There are also numerous reports of ETH wallets being compromised, but it is not clear if this is a related or a separate issue.
News that once again comes in handy “cold” wallets, in other words physical wallets like the one from Ledger. On this type of key, your cryptocurrencies are stored offline and you are the only one with the private key, unlike platforms like Binance, Coinbase or even FTX where every wallet you open on the blockchain gives the platform access to this private key and the ability to requisition your funds (on example in the case of an economic shock).
Explore Ledger Wallets
As our colleagues from Corner Newspaper, so it is better to protect your cryptocurrencies if it is not already done on your end. Similarly, don’t forget to deauthorize access to your wallets, the kind of procedure you probably won’t complete when interacting with a smart contract or minting an NFT.
Solana hacking is still in progress. More information to come…
