Thousands of “hot” wallets connected to the internet have been the target of hackers who have stolen millions worth of cryptocurrency from the Solana ecosystem. Even while such attacks are typical among blockchain platforms, the story is still noteworthy given the accolades Solana has received for being one of the more efficient and affordable ecosystems for trading digital assets.
Both Solana’s own cryptocurrency (SOL) and others that are compatible with the Solana blockchain, such as the stablecoin USD Coin, appear to have been stolen by hackers (USDC). For now, the value of the assets taken is unknown yet because the attack is still going on, however, estimates from unbiased analysts and security companies like PeckShield have put the losses as high as $8 million.
In the past, Solana has suffered a number of security issues, such as bot spam and DDoS attempts that have been documented. It is also accepting reservations for the Saga phone, which it claims will go on sale next year and will include built-in support for the network’s decentralized apps.
According to Solana’s official Twitter account, the hack appears to have compromised about 8,000 wallets (up from 7,767 previously), including those run by Phantom and Slope. While noting that there was no proof that hardware wallets, or those not linked to the internet, had been impacted, the business did not specify the cause of the attack.
“This does not appear to be an issue with Solana core code, but in software utilized by numerous software wallets popular among users of the network,” the company’s status update reads in a tweet.
Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana’s co-founder, provided additional information about the breach on Twitter, saying it appeared to be a supply chain attack that targeted both iOS and Android applications (meaning that the attackers exploited some weakness in connected apps or browser extensions). According to Decrypt, the transactions are signed using the users’ private keys, which indicates that the attackers may have compromised the seed phrase used to protect the individuals’ wallets.
