Solana ecosystem hit by hack draining millions in crypto from 8,000 hot wallets

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Thousands of "hot" wallets connected to the internet have had their funds drained by hackers. The news is significant given the praise Solana has attracted as one of the fastest and cheaper platforms for trading digital assets.

It seems that hackers have been able to steal both the SOL and the stable coinUSDC. The value of the assets stolen is not known, but reports from independent analysts and security firms estimate the losses as high as $8 million.

In the past, Solana has had to contend with security incidents such as reported distributed denial of service. The Saga phone will launch next year with support for the network's apps built-in.

This does not appear to be a bug with Solana core code, but in software used by several software wallets popular among users of the network.



Updates will be posted to https://t.co/ivyoIbdCDP as they become available. 2/2

— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) August 3, 2022

According to the official account of Solana, approximately 8,000 of their wallet appear to have been affected by the attack. There was no evidence that hardware wallet were affected by the attack.

This does not appear to be a bug with Solana core code, but in software used by several software wallet popular among users of the network.

The hack seems to have been a supply chain attack, meaning that the attackers exploited some weakness in connected apps or browser extensions. The transactions are signed with users private keys, suggesting that the attackers have compromised the seed phrase used to secure their wallet.

The latest updates from Solana have been added.