In a shocking turn of events, the Fantom Foundation, the driving force behind the Fantom blockchain, and its employees have fallen victim to a targeted hack that resulted in the loss of an estimated $7 million. This incident has sent shockwaves throughout the cryptocurrency community.
The hack, which came to light when blockchain security firm CertiK sounded the alarm, revealed that the stolen funds had been aggregated into an externally owned address, currently holding 4,501.58 ETH. The investigation was initiated after an alert from an account known as “Spreek,” who diligently tracked the hacker’s movements. Astonishingly, a member of the Fantom team lost a staggering $3.4 million in the exploit.
— Fantom Foundation (@FantomFDN) October 17, 2023
The Fantom Foundation swiftly confirmed the breach, acknowledging a loss of $550,000 due to the hack. Notably, some of the Foundation’s wallets, reassigned to employees, were also affected, marking this as a “targeted personal attack.” The Foundation stated that although initial reports hinted at a zero-day hack via Google Chrome, they are actively delving into the hack’s mechanics.
Fantom Foundation allegedly drained on one of their wallets via a Chrome zero day pic.twitter.com/PhBO2TtsAt
— Spreek (@spreekaway) October 17, 2023
Analysts speculate that private key theft, phishing scams, social engineering, or malicious Trojan files may have played a role in this devastating security breach. Furthermore, it was discovered that the targeted addresses were either under a single entity’s control or had their private keys stored in a singular location.
Stolen funds have been consolidated into EOA 0x0b1 which holds 4,501.48 ETH (~$7m) pic.twitter.com/IU9GKm1qyx
— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) October 17, 2023
The stolen assets encompassed Convex Finance (CVX) tokens, DAI, USDC, and Fantom’s native token FTM, which was trading at $0.17 at the time of reporting, experiencing a 3.4% decline in the last 24 hours.
The cryptocurrency world remains on high alert, emphasizing the ever-growing importance of robust security measures to safeguard digital assets.
