Imagine going through a heist without knowing the culprit. Yes, a very unfortunate scenario. Now, multiply this robbery by millions of dollars and think about the circumstances. No wonder, you will be petrified. Well, this is an emerging case from the crypto world.
Knock knock, who’s there?
On August 3, the Solana network suffered a multi-million dollar hack, the culprit of which remains unknown as of this writing.
Therefore, SOL, the native token of the Solana network, fall It fell 3.76% in the past 24 hours to $38. The incident resulted in over 8000 wallets being affected.
Source: CoinMarketCap
This Affected users Share their pain on social media platforms. So far, more than 8,000 wallets have been affected. And, hackers have managed to steal $580 million. This was reportedly done by the four addresses mentioned below in the tweet.
Security analyst MisTrack shared the development.
So far, the following 4 addresses have stolen more than 8,000 wallets and about $580 million.
Htp9MGP8Tig923ZFY7Qf2zzbMUmYneFRAhSp7vSg4wxV
CEzN7mqP9xoxn2HdyW6fjEJ73t7qaX9Rp2zyS6hb3iEu
5WwBYgQG6BdErM2nNNyUmQXfcUnB68b6kesxBywh1J3n
GeEccGJ9BEzVbVor1njkBCCiqXJbXVeDHaXDCrBDbmuy pic.twitter.com/N7wJlCOi8p— MistTrack 🕵️ (@MistTrack_io) August 3, 2022
Blockchain investigator PeckShield reiterated the aforementioned illegal activities. He further added that the widespread hack may have resulted from a “supply chain issue” exploited to steal users’ private keys.
#PeckShieldAlert The widespread hack of the Solana wallet may have been due to supply chain issues exploited to steal/discover user private keys affecting the wallet. Losses are estimated to be $8M so far, excluding one illiquid shitcoin (only 30 holdings, possibly misvalued by $570M) pic.twitter.com/aTGNsTc6d8
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) August 3, 2022
Related wallet provider Phantom and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Magic Eden warned users about the same issue. Phantom, a Solana wallet built for DeFi and NFTs, tweeted,
We are working closely with other teams to identify reported vulnerabilities in the Solana ecosystem. Currently, the team does not believe this is a Phantom-specific issue.
We will post an update as soon as we gather more information.
— Phantom (@phantom) August 3, 2022
Magic Eden comfirmed A report earlier in the day on August 3 stated that,
“There appears to be a widespread SOL vulnerability draining wallets and people should revoke permissions for any suspicious links.”
According to Solana Status, engineers from multiple ecosystems, with the help of several security companies, investigated drained wallets on Solana. “There is no evidence that hardware wallets were affected,” the team disclose in a tweet.
Meanwhile, Ava Labs CEO and founder Emin Gun Sirer said the number is more than 7,000 wallets. Well, “that number goes up at around 20 per minute.” Since the transaction appears to be signed correctly, the attacker may have gained access to the private key.
One possible avenue is a “supply chain attack”, where a JS library is hacked and a user’s private key is leaked (stealed). The affected wallets appear to have been created in the past 9 months or so, but there are reports that newly created wallets are also affected.
— Emin Gün Sirer 🔺 (@el33th4xor) August 3, 2022
Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), too Comment shed light on the situation on this delicate issue.
shadow of certainty
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time a Solana-related hack has been discovered.
That doesn’t mean SOL doesn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Despite poor market conditions, network usage, as measured by unique payers, is still on the rise.
On the Solana network, unique paying users reached an all-time high of 450,000 in May. That’s nearly double the all-time high of 280,000 in January 2022.
resource: Messari
Notably, the network averaged around 205,000 unique payers in the first quarter. And, stabilized at around 320,000 in the second quarter.
The growth of unique fee payers is in line with the growth of newly minted NFTs, NFT sales, and unique NFT buyers.
