8,000 Solana Wallets Drained by hackers in one go!

We've all heard about how hackers frequently target single protocol smart contracts in their attacks on blockchains. But in Solana's instance, the hackers stole money from 8000 wallets without anyone knowing how!? It appeared as though a hacker had obtained access to the private keys of numerous individuals and was systematically emptying their wallets one by one. One of the worst and most stressful hacks ever to affect users was the one that occurred on Solana.

The blockchain security company Otter tweeted that the Slope mobile wallet was the cause of the breach. The Slope mobile app was transmitting to its TLS Sentry server the mnemonic phrases for users' private keys (mnemonic phrases are a list of words that store all the information needed to recover a wallet). The mnemonics are then stored in plaintext, the company claimed, making user private keys accessible to anyone with access to Sentry. According to Otter's analysis, 1400 addresses were affected by this particular vulnerability. Investigations are ongoing to determine how hackers accessed the remaining impacted wallets. However, Slope and Solana advised their users to create new wallets using fresh seed phrases and transfer over their assets.

In the realm of cryptocurrency, where multi-million hacks are frequent, the amount isn't huge. For cryptocurrency users, however, the attack was shocking since funds just started disappearing randomly from wallets, and it took security experts nearly a day to figure out what had happened.

Events like the Slope wallet vulnerability, in the opinion of BlockChainSentry, emphasize the value of comprehending the more technical facets of cryptocurrency. Usually, it would help if you kept your private key and seed phrase safe and did not disclose them to anyone. Also, storing them in a hardware cryptocurrency wallet offers more security than a software wallet. If you lose your private key and access to your seed phrase, you'll never be able to reassess your cryptos.