The Solana ecosystem was hacked early Wednesday morning following the attack on Nomad at the beginning of the week. The estimated loss from various sources is just over %5.2 million that were stolen from around 7,900 Solana wallets. This estimate is according to blockchain forensics firm Elliptic. The co-founder of the firm Tom Robinson says, “The root cause is still not clear. It appears to be due to a flaw in certain wallet software, rather than in the Solana blockchain itself.”
Solana’s SOL token fell as much as 7.3 percent to $38.40 in early trading on Wednesday, its lowest level in a week due to the attack. Bitcoin increased by 1.3 percent to $23,327.
Solana Status Tweet
According to a tweet sent out Wednesday afternoon by Solana Status (a Twitter account managed by the Solana Foundation), the attack affected users of a digital crypto wallet made by Slope Finance.
The tweet said, “There is no evidence the Solana protocol or its cryptography was compromised.” Slope confirmed in a statement that there were wallets affected by the hack. They are now conducting their own research into the Solana hack that affected the wallet of their own founders and staff.
The crypto industry has suffered many attacks this year. As mentioned above, the Solana wallet hack happened days after Nomad sustained losses. Nomad is a bridge protocol designed for transferring crypto tokens along different blockchains. On Monday, a security problem cost them nearly $200 million. According to a June report by Elliptic, more than $1 billion has already been stolen from bridges in 2022.
Solana spokesman Austin Federa said, “Much remains unknown at this point – expect that hardware wallets are not impacted.”
While the incident may have been a supply-chain attack, the nature of the exploit is unknown, according to Federa. Supply-chain hacks happen when an outside party or provider gains access to the victim’s systems and data.
Solana, which has previously experienced network outages, is a competitor to the Ethereum blockchain. As Ethereum transaction prices rose last year, chains like Solana, which boast low transaction fees, emerged as viable alternatives for minting non-fungible tokens. Solana’s code is also popular among clients who want to create their own decentralized finance applications.
The article was originally published on CBC
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