In short
- Solana perp DEX Drift Protocol has been plagued by money laundering involving more than $200 million, with an estimated $285 million stolen.
- While the investigation is ongoing, the attack is believed to be the result of a leaked private key.
- Drift has paused deposits and withdrawals in the middle of the process.
Solana-based decentralized exchange Drift Protocol is quickly facing exploitation that has led to the theft of more than $200 million, on-chain data shows.
The protocol, which is mainly used for trading futures, has stopped deposits and withdrawals between these shows.
“Drift Protocol is experiencing a problem,” it posted on X around 3:00 pm ET on Wednesday. “Funds and withdrawals have been suspended. We are contacting several security companies, bridges, and exchanges to find out what happened. This is not an April Fools’ joke,” the company wrote.
Reports of suspicious activity began about two hours earlier, when users noticed that large sums of money were being transferred from the Drift Protocol chat room to Solana’s address starting with “HkGz4K.”
The account’s first transfer took place around 11:06 am, when approximately 41 million JLP tokens worth $155 million were transferred from the Drift Vault to “HkGz4K.” Soon, millions more in various crypto tokens were transferred to the attacker and eventually distributed to other wallets.
The address, which was first supported by 1 SOL last week, may have been able to take advantage since then. received a small change from the valuable Drift Vault about $2.52, according to chain data from Solana log search, Solscan.
After Wednesday’s action, the full transfer from the protocol to the attacker’s address in addition to $250 millionaccording to data from blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence.
Estimates from PeckShield Alerts show that that an amount of 285 million dollars can be used.
Drift Protocol has yet to determine what caused the hack, but chain researchers and security experts say it might the result of the public secret keywhich allowed the attacker to compromise admin functionality and compromise the vaults. In other words, a human error rather than a technical one.
Jiang Xuxian, founder of blockchain security company PeckShield, said Decrypt This attack relied on gaining access to the Drift channel.
“The admin keys behind Drift have been downloaded or compromised,” he said.
Drift, that one had $550 million in total closed valueaccording to DefiLlama, it has been joined by other companies in the Solana ecosystem due to the number of products available on its platform and its DeFi capabilities.
Others, such as Solana’s real estate company Forward Industries and The opinion of the company DeFi Development Corp. they have shown that their wealth has not been affected by exploitation.
Other companies that make Solana equipment, such as the bag supplier Phantom, are involved they set up warnings for users trying to access Drift Protocol while the search is in progress.
Drift’s token, DRIFT, is down about 28% on the day, recently changing hands at around $0.049. The token is down more than 98% from its November 2024 all-time high of $2.60.
Additional reports are André Beganski
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