Greater than 5,000 Ethereum (ETH) and an undetermined amount of tokens and NFTs have been stolen throughout a number of chains in an ongoing hack since late final yr, mentioned MetaMask dev @tayvano_.
“I don’t understand how massive it’s however since Dec 2022 it’s drained 5000+ ETH and ??? in tokens / NFTs / cash throughout 11+ chains.“
The dev added that he has been investigating for the final two days however can not decide how the attacker is finishing up the thefts. Furthermore, the victims are all “OGs who’re fairly safe.”
OGs targetted in subtle MetaMask heist
@tayvano_ identified that it is a subtle assault intentionally focusing on OGs, reiterating that nobody can work out the place the exploit lies.
“That is NOT a low-brow phishing website or a random scammer. It has NOT rekt a single noob. It ONLY rekts OGs.”
Forensic gadget examination has led nowhere — additional stumping investigations into the strategy used to entry the victims’ MetaMask pockets.
The commonalities between circumstances have been the keys have been created between 2014 and 2022, and victims are “crypto native,” corresponding to possessing a number of addresses and dealing throughout the crypto business.
The hacker will commit “major” thefts, with “secondary” thefts following hours later to gather belongings and mud missed throughout the preliminary heist — generally weeks or months later.
Within the case of huge thefts, the attacker will swap belongings into ETH contained in the pockets, then ship the tokens to a centralized swapper, together with SimpleSwap and ChangeNOW — all the time swapping into Bitcoin (BTC).
Sitting on the swapped BTC for every week, the funds are despatched to a mixer for deal with obfuscation.
Recommendations on staying protected
@tayvano_ speculates that the attacker has acquired a knowledge cache from the victims’ gadget. Utilizing this, they will summary the MetaMask keys — however he stresses that that is “only a guess.”
“My greatest guess rn is that somebody has received themselves a fatty cache of information from 1+ yr in the past & is methodically draining the keys as they parse them from the treasure trove.“
The dev cautions MetaMask customers to keep away from storing all their digital belongings on a single pockets key. As a substitute, individuals ought to cut up their crypto throughout a number of keys or maintain belongings on a {hardware} pockets.
“PLEASE DON’T KEEP ALL YOUR ASSETS IN A SINGLE KEY OR SECRET PHRASE FOR YEARS. THE END.“
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