Hacks, Forks, and Hash Rate
Not-So-Private Keys
This week started with a pair of high-profile exploits – the first of which came in the form of a bridge hack, as interoperable bridging protocol Nomad was hacked for $200 million. Ironically, the vulnerability appeared to stem from a known bug highlighted in a previous audit. Despite this, the Nomad hack furthered widespread skepticism surrounding multichain bridge security.
To seemingly one-up Monday’s hacker, an entity on Tuesday began a smaller but arguably more sinister hack that manifested in funds being drained from individual “non-custodial” hot wallets native to the Solana network. This was a confounding exploit as the hack targeted individual users, not a protocol or treasury. It appeared on chain as though users were signing their transactions, thus validating transfers to the malicious actor.
The apparent novelty of this hack initially caused widespread panic since many reasonably believed this to be an issue specific to the Solana blockchain, potentially rendering all funds secured on Solana to be compromised. The uniqueness of the situation also resulted in an extended diagnosis period for the issue. While exploits are typically diagnosed minutes following their public reveal, this issue required more time for developers and consequently pro...