- Fantom Foundation has incurred heavy losses due to a zero-day exploit on Chrome
- The foundation’s telegram admin has claimed that the loss is under $1 million, while a team member has lost millions
Update: Fantom Foundation released a statement stating that they were “aware” of reports about a small number of its wallets being compromised. The team confirmed that $550k of Fantom Foundation was lost due to the exploit, but did not confirm the mechanism of the attack.
The press release reads, “While there were initial reports of a zero-day hack via Google Chrome, the mechanism for the attack is being actively investigated.” The note further read,
“Some of these impacted wallets were labeled “Foundation Wallets”, but they were no longer utilized by the organizaton and had been reassigned to a Fantom employee, making this a targeted personal attack. The funds lost by the employee are currently being tracked and investigated.”
— Fantom Foundation (@FantomFDN) October 17, 2023
Fantom Foundation — a developer group dedicated to building Fantom — reportedly fell victim to a hack earlier today (17 October). As per a message on Telegram, the hack was a result of a zero-day exploit on Chrome. This resulted in losses amounting to “hundreds of thousands of dollars”.
The representative said,
“Was on an earlier version of chrome released on September 29, 2023, but that update was vulnerable to another one. A few days ago Chrome announced another version”
Read Fantom’s [FTM] Price Prediction 2023-24
A zero-day exploit was found and fixed by Google Chrome in September 2023. The exploit allows outside parties to run commands on devices remotely. Reported by Apple Security Engineering and Architecture (SEAR) and The Citizen Lab, the bug has been exploited widely. In accordance with this, users have been advised to update their browser version as anyone could fall victim to this hack.
Fantom: the new crypto victim of hack
While the exact amount lost due to this hack remains unknown, speculations have run amok on social media platforms. According to a pseudonymous X user – Spreek – the multiple wallets of Fantom Foundation were affected because of the exploit.
Along with this, some personal wallets of team members have also been affected. This was also stated by a Telegram administrator going by ‘CellarDoor99’, who said, “A non foundation wallet was compromised with the foundations wallets… Foundations losses are under a million. In the hundreds of thousands The non foundation wallet had a bit more in it”
Fantom Foundation wallets have been drained on Ethereum and Fantom
So far we can confirm:
Fantom: Foundation Wallet 20 lost ~$470k on FTM
Fantom: Foundation Wallet 18 lost at least ~$187k on ETHWe will continue to track https://t.co/KnyqgaO4CB
— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) October 17, 2023
Moreover, one team member has lost money to the scope of $3.4 million, with the hacker taking home a whopping $6.7 million. The collective money in the hacker’s account is 4,501.58 ETH, which is $7 million. The Fantom Foundation team has not released an official statement on the attack, however, the Telegram team claimed that it would released soon.
Notably, the telegram administrator of Fantom Foundation – Jane – assured that most of the funds are stored in their cold wallets. The money that was drained was from one of their hot wallets. The representative also stated that the team was actively investigating the matter. The individual further added that TRM Labs – a blockchain intelligence firm – joined their efforts.
Impact on FTM
The news of a hack has had little to no effect on the price of Fantom [FTM]. According to CoinMarketCap, at press time, the price of the token was $0.1779 and had a market cap of over $498 million. The coin didn’t have a significant price shift in the past hour but did register a loss of over 4% in the past 24 hours. However, this loss was also noted in the wider crypto market, with some alts shedding value by over 6% in the past day.
