Recently, there are rumors on the Internet that hackers have emptied the wallets of a large number of cryptocurrency users and specifically targeted senior people in the cryptocurrency industry. Since December last year, more than 5,000 Ethereum coins have been stolen. Later, it was even reported that the reason for the incident was "MetaMask wallet private keys were leaked on a large scale", causing panic in the industry overnight and leaving security experts at a loss.
Taylor Monahan, founder of the Ethereum wallet management company MyCrypto, posted yesterday (18th) that she discovered that a large number of encrypted wallets had been stolen since December last year, with the loss estimated to be more than 5,000 Ethereum coins, worth approximately tens of millions of dollars.
She added that no one knows about the hackers’ intrusion methods and attack methods, but the common points they have learned so far are that the victims are mainly senior people rather than novices in the currency circle, and the private keys of the stolen wallets are all Was created between 2014 and 2022.
Taylor Monahan advises users not to keep all crypto assets in the same wallet for a long time, but to store them separately and try to use cold wallets.
For the past 48hrs I've been unwinding a massive wallet draining operation
I don't know how big it is but since Dec 2022 it's drained 5000+ ETH and ??? in tokens / NFTs / coins across 11+ chains.
Its rekt my friends & OGs who are reasonably secure.
No one knows how. pic.twitter.com/MafntG7RkP
— Tay (@tayvano_) April 18, 2023
Although Taylor Monahan only stated in the post that "a large number of wallets were stolen", the news later spread more and more biased, causing many people to mistakenly believe that the attack vulnerability was "MetaMask is not secure" and "MetaMask wallet private keys were leaked on a large scale." .
In this regard, the SlowMist security team tracked and found that there is no sign or evidence that the stolen wallets all belong to the same wallet provider or platform.
SlowMist founder Yu Xian also said that the reasonable explanation is that private keys were collected indiscriminately in some databases, and hackers gradually discovered that these data contained private keys. He also stressed that rumors spreading that MetaMask is unsafe are false.
On the other hand, the official MetaMask team also responded that the reason why the above-mentioned users were stolen was not because of vulnerabilities in MetaMask, and that the statement that "MetaMask was hacked and 5,000 Ethereum coins were stolen" is incorrect.
The team said that in this incident, the victims were "not limited to MetaMask users." Data shows that the 5,000 Ether was stolen from different addresses across 11 blockchains.
MetaMask finally stated that the security team is working with other experts in the field of Web3 wallets to study the source of this vulnerability, and called on never to store annotations online and to use cold wallets more.
This article "Hackers" stole 5,000 Ethereum coins! Specializing in coin industry veterans, the attack methods are still unknown. First appeared on Blockchain.