Solana is undergoing a major network attack, where hot wallets are drained of their SOL, and the funds are redirected to several addresses. So far, over $500 million worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen by the hackers, who are consolidating the hacked funds into four Solana addresses.
For those who still have access to their SOL, we recommend moving the cryptocurrency off hot wallets and swapping the coins to an EVM-based chain like Ethereum or BNB.
According to a Twitter post, over 8k wallets have been hacked, spanning over $580 million in funds at the time of writing.
So far more than 8000 wallets and ~$580M were stolen by the following 4 addresses.
Htp9MGP8Tig923ZFY7Qf2zzbMUmYneFRAhSp7vSg4wxV
CEzN7mqP9xoxn2HdyW6fjEJ73t7qaX9Rp2zyS6hb3iEu
5WwBYgQG6BdErM2nNNyUmQXfcUnB68b6kesxBywh1J3n
GeEccGJ9BEzVbVor1njkBCCiqXJbXVeDHaXDCrBDbmuy pic.twitter.com/N7wJlCOi8p— MistTrack🕵️ (@MistTrack_io) August 3, 2022
There still hasn’t been any official response from the Solana Twitter account, and the Solana network hasn’t been halted. While users speculated that this could be a Phantom wallet-specific issue, the Web3 wallet announced on Twitter that they are investigating the attack and don’t believe it’s a wallet-specific issue. However, many on Twitter report their Phantom wallets being drained off SOL tokens.
We are working closely with other teams to get to the bottom of a reported vulnerability in the Solana ecosystem. At this time, the team does not believe this is a Phantom-specific issue.
As soon as we gather more information, we will issue an update.
— Phantom (@phantom) August 3, 2022
The consensus in the community is that the attacker compromised the private keys of several hot wallets. It’s unclear as to the exact exploit the hacker used. Still, if you want to protect your cryptocurrency on the Solana chain, the two options are to either transfer your crypto to a different chain either via an exchange or a cross-chain bridge or to transfer your SOL to a cold wallet whose private keys haven’t been exposed to the internet.
Users in the Solana community are also upset that the official Solana team has yet to address the hack since it has already been several hours since news of the attack broke out.
For me, the fact that #Solana didn’t address , or acknowledge the hack is a good enough reason to sell my whole bag. #transparency is key in #cryptocurrency
— Eric Rice (@0xEricRice) August 3, 2022
Since Solana is known to be a semi-centralized blockchain, it’s possible that the core team might be able to roll back the blockchain before the hack and nullify over half a billion in transactions. However, that would require considerable community efforts and agreement over reversing the last several hours of transactions.
The only clue we have so far regarding the Solana attack is a Twitter statement by Anatoly Yakovenko, Co-Founder of Solana. He said that this seems like an iOS and Android supply chain attack. Explaining that “all the confirmed stories so far have had the key imported or generated on mobile. Most reports are slope, but a few phantom users as well.”
Seems like an iOS supply chain attack. Multiple plausible wallets that only received sol and had no interactions beyond receiving have been affected. https://t.co/ne0g3ZmLH5
As well as key that were imported into iOS, and generated externally.https://t.co/hStAr1mU6Q
— toly 🇺🇸 (@aeyakovenko) August 3, 2022
Such a significant attack is bound to create bearish momentum for Solana and the global crypto market as a whole. This marks one of the most significant DeFi attacks for crypto in history, the likes of which the market hasn’t seen in many years.
Solana is starting its downhill slide, with the cryptocurrency down 2.56% in the past 24 hours and down 1% in the past hour, currently trading at $40.22. Solana’s current market capitalization is $13.9 billion, with a 24-hour trading volume of $2.3 billion.
The 24-hour trading volume for SOL is up over 110% and is likely to increase significantly as users unload their SOL to other chains due to the fear of losing their funds and falling victim to the latest hack.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any projects.
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