Thousands of Solana wallets emptied of funds in security breach

Preferred by fans for its ease and speed of transaction processing, Solana joins the long list of cryptocurrencies targeted by large-scale cyber attacks.

Taking advantage of a newly discovered vulnerability, an unknown group of hackers emptied more than 8,000 electronic wallets used to store the cryptocurrency Solana . It is estimated that the holders of this cryptocurrency suffered cumulative losses of approximately $8 million.

Engineers from multiple ecosystems, with the help of several security firms, are investigating drained wallets on Solana. There is no evidence hardware wallets are impacted.

This thread will be updated as new information becomes available.

– Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) August 3, 2022

The attack targeted only so-called “hot wallets”, accessible from the internet and commonly used for quick transactions. But according to further investigation, the attack does not appear to be limited to the Solana cryptocurrency, with Justin Barlow, an investor at Solana Ventures, reporting that the funds held in USDC were also completely drained. Crypto analyst @0xfoobar also confirms that “the attacker is stealing both native tokens (SOL) and SPL tokens (USDC)… with wallets that have been inactive for less than 6 months being vulnerable”.

Apparently other wallet types were compromised in the attack, including Phantom, Slope, Solflare and TrustWallet. Emptied wallets should be treated as compromised and abandoned, Solana warned, encouraging users to switch to inaccessible hardware wallets from the Internet.

The cause of the attack remains unclear, but industry leaders, including Emin Gün Sirer, founder of another popular blockchain Avalanche, pointed out that the transactions were properly signed, meaning the vulnerability could be a supply chain attack that succeeds in evading the private cryptographic keys used by users to authorize transactions. @0xfoobar added that “something probably caused the large-scale compromise of private keys”, warning empty cryptocurrency wallets should be abandoned and replaced.