Fantom Foundation Loses Over Half-A-Million Due To Hack Caused By Google Chrome Flaw

Fantom Foundation, the smart contract platform for digital assets and decentralized apps (dApps), lost over half a million dollars in crypto assets due to a zero-day hack via Google Chrome.

The foundation wallets of the Fantom blockchain were siphoned on both Ethereum and Fantom, blockchain security analyst Certik reported, with the foundation wallet on FTM losing around $470,000 and $187,000 on Ethereum.

"We are aware of reports indicating a small number of Fantom wallets were compromised earlier today. At this juncture, we can confirm the wallets in question were affected, including approximately $550K in Fantom Foundation funds. The significant majority of Fantom Foundation funds (more than 99%) were unaffected and remain secure," Fantom disclosed in a tweet.

"There was zero-day exploit on Chrome because of that some of Fantom foundation wallet got drained. Fantom losses were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and we are actively tracking the movements of lost funds," an administrator of the company's Telegram channel.

Earlier, Fantom said it was actively investigating the incident.

"While there were initial reports of a zero-day hack via Google Chrome, the mechanism for the attack is being actively investigated. A Fantom employee's personal wallets were compromised. Some of these impacted wallets were labeled "Foundation Wallets", but they were no longer being utilized by the organization 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 said in a tweet.

Initial reports claimed that the platform lost $7 million in crypto due to the hack, but the team clarified that some of the wallets labeled Fantom Foundation wallet were mislabeled by blockchain explorers and that not all stolen funds were from the foundation.

Moreover, Fandom explained some wallets indeed belonged to the foundation, but those had since been reassigned to a Fantom employee and were no longer holding funds that belonged to the company.

Since 2011, crypto hacks cost the industry $12.36 billion, 30.74% of which came from 192 cryptocurrency exchanges that cumulatively lost $3.8 billion to cybercriminals, data from a report by independent think tank The Money Mongers revealed.

The report highlighted that 297 crypto hacks were executed this year alone and underlined that the industry loses $216,000 every hour.

"The research findings, revealing a cumulative loss of $12.36 billion since 2011 and $1.89 billion in 2023 alone, underscore the urgent need for fortified security in the crypto domain," The Money Mongers CEO Sudhir Khatwani told International Business Times.