Cryptocurrency wallet provider MetaMask has denied claims that an exploit of its wallet is the cause of a “massive wallet draining operation” that has claimed over 5,000 Ether (ETH).
On April 18, MetaMask tweeted in response to a series of tweets posted on April 17 by Taylor Monahan, the founder of Ethereum wallet manager MyCrypto, who explained an unidentified wallet-draining exploit has stolen over $10.5 million in crypto and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) since December 2022.
“Recent reporting on [Monahan’s] thread has incorrectly claimed that a massive wallet-draining operation is a result of a MetaMask exploit,” MetaMask said.
Recent reporting on @tayvano_’s thread has incorrectly claimed that a massive wallet draining operation is a result of a MetaMask exploit.
— MetaMask (@MetaMask) April 18, 2023
This is incorrect. This is not a MetaMask-specific exploit. https://t.co/MiJ3QgslMy
“This is incorrect. This is not a MetaMask-specific exploit,” it added.
The wallet provider said the 5,000 ETH was stolen “from various addresses across 11 blockchains,” reaffirming the claim that funds were hacked from MetaMask “is incorrect.”
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Wallet Guard co-founder Ohm Shah said the MetaMask team has been “researching tirelessly,” and there is “no solid answer to how this has happened.”
“There are tons of independent security researchers also investigating this,” Shah said.
He speculated it was possible to assume that there had been “some sort of private key or seed phrase leak.”
In its latest series of tweets, MetaMask confirmed its security team was researching the source of the exploit and was “working with others across the Web3 wallet space”
Related: SafeMoon hacker agrees to return 80% of stolen funds, says development team
In her thread on the exploit, Monahan stated that “no one knows how” this massive attack was conducted, but her “best guess” was that a significant amount of old data was obtained and used to extract the funds.
She also originally claimed the attacker was draining long-time MetaMask users and employees by using MetaMask.
Monahan later stated the exploit is not MetaMask-specific and “users of all wallets, even those created on a hardware wallet,” have been impacted by the exploit.
Magazine: Should crypto projects ever negotiate with hackers? Probably