Solana Hack – $6 Million Stolen From Thousands Of Wallets
Cryptocurrencies get beaten black and blue every time the security features of blockchain technology get compromised. The recent Solana hack has been another punch in the gut, with thousands of users losing money. What happened this time?
Author:Rhyley CarneyReviewer:Paula M. GrahamAug 04, 202216.6K Shares278.2K Views
This week’s Solana hacktargeted the blockchain’s cryptocurrency wallet– over 8,000 of them – resulting in at least $6 million loss.
The hacking commenced on the evening of August 2.
When various sites caught up with the incident, they reported it was still ongoing as of August 3.
On that day, at 1:09 p.m., Solana took to Twitter to inform the public about it:
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An exploit allowed a malicious actor to drain funds from a number of wallets on Solana.
There was no mention of how the Solana hack occurred.
It could be that Twitter’s 280-character limit might be hindering a comprehensive explanation.
Or, Solana was still clueless at that time as investigations ensued.
Nevertheless, the tweet included two important details, namely, the number of wallets compromised and which ones.
Progress on crypto regulation and a big hack for Solana
According to Solana, as of 5:00 a.m. (UTC) on August 3, “approximately 7,767 wallets have been affected.”
Phantom and Slope were among those wallets.
Solana immediately followed the aforementioned tweet with another one. This time, saying that hardware wallets were not affected by the Solana hack.
With that confirmation, it gave this piece of advice to users:
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Do not reuse your seed phrase on a hardware wallet – create a new seed phrase.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, advised the same thing via Twitter.
Zhao asked Slope wallet users to transfer their crypto tokensto a new wallet and to “use a new private key or seed phrase.”
At 9:13 p.m. (still on August 3), Solana tweeted an update.
From the 7,767 wallets initially reported to be affected, the figures now peaked at an estimated 8,000.
In addition, the amount lost from the Solana hack, based on some sources, soared from $6 million to around $8 million.
A CNBC report published on the morning of August 3 mentioned $5.2 million.
Based on his tweet on August 3, Anatoly Yakovenko, the co-founder of Solano, surmised that those who got affected were using Apple devices.
Nearly a couple of hours after that post, the Ukrainian-born computer engineer tweeted to correct himself.
Yakovenko said that the Solano hack likewise affected Android users.
Slope wallet by Slope Finance at Google Play Store