The Fantom Foundation, the developer of the Fantom network, has been hacked for over $550,000 in cryptocurrency. The foundation confirmed the attack on X, stating that the majority of the stolen funds belonged to other users and that 99% of the foundation’s funds remain safe. The team is currently investigating the attack, he said.
– Fantom Foundation (@FantomFDN) October 17, 2023
Blockchain security researchers initially reported that the attacker stole approximately $7 million in cryptocurrency. The Fantom Foundation later issued an official statement saying that some of the wallets labeled “Fantom: Foundation Wallet” were incorrectly labeled by block explorers and that not all of the stolen funds were from the foundation. According to the team, some of the affected wallets initially belonged to the foundation, but had since been reassigned to a Fantom employee and no longer contained company funds. The team is currently investigating the attack in an attempt to determine how the wallets were compromised.
The Fantom Foundation is the developer behind the Fantom network, a smart contract platform compatible with the ethereum Virtual Machine. The network has more than $45 million in assets. locked within their contracts, according to DefiLlama. The attack was against the foundation and other users of the Fantom wallet, not the Fantom network.
The attacker’s total profit (may not necessarily come from Fantom or related wallets) appears to be ~$6.7 million. pic.twitter.com/0rkDHULsdI
– Speak (@speakaway) October 17, 2023
On October 17, network detective Spreek reported on X that the foundation was “allegedly” attacked, according to a Telegram report. They later listed the hacked wallets and estimated the losses at $6.7 million, but also stated that the drained funds may have included other sources outside of the Fantom Foundation.
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CertiK blockchain security platform confirmed that the foundation had been hacked. He initially estimated the losses at $657,000, but later updated this figure to approximately $7 million. Digging deeper into the blockchain data shows that an account named “Fantom Foundation Wallet 1” from Etherscan sent more than 2000 CVX, 1000 Dai (DAI), 4500 USD Coin (USDC) and other tokens in a wallet labeled “Fake_Phishing188024”. Additionally, an account named “Fantom Foundation Wallet 20” by the Fantom network block explorer. sent more than 1 million FTM (FTM) to an account named “Fake_Phishing32”. When a development team sends funds to a known fraudulent account, this usually indicates that the team’s private key has been stolen.
Update October 17 at 6:40 pm UTC: This article has been updated to include an official statement from the Fantom Foundation about X.
Update October 17 at 5:55 pm UTC: This article has been updated to show that CertiK increased its total loss estimate and to provide statements from an administrator of the Fantom Telegram group.
This is a developing story and more information will be added as it becomes available.
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