Unknown attacker drains Monero fund of about $452,000

The attacker attacked the Monero crowdfunding wallet, draining the entire balance of 2,675.73 XMR (~$452,200 at the time of writing).

The incident occurred on September 1, but the developer behind the handle luigi1111 disclosed it only on November 2 in a GitHub thread. According to him, the cause of the exploit has not yet been determined.

He noted that the project’s hot wallet, which holds around 244 XMR, remains secure.

“This attack is shameless, because they seized funds that people were counting on to pay rent or buy food,” said another developer, Ricardo Spanyi, known as Fluffypony.

The Monero community crowdfunding system funds proposals from supporters for ecosystem development. The fund address was configured in the Ubuntu system in 2020 together with a blockchain node.

According to the post, access to it was restricted to luigi1111 and Fluffypony. To make payments, the team used a desktop hot wallet.

“It is quite possible that this is related to the ongoing attacks we have been monitoring since April, as they involve a number of compromised keys (including Bitcoin wallet.dat, seed phrases generated using all manner of hardware and software, pre-sale Ethereum wallets, etc.),” said Spanyi.

According to other developers, the breach may have occurred because the wallet keys were available online on the Ubuntu server.

The Monero team urged the “Main Fund” to cover all costs arising from the incident.

Earlier, representatives of the Fantom Foundation said that one of the organization’s wallets was hacked “due to the zero-day vulnerability in the Google Chrome browser”.

Beosin reports that, in October, losses from hacking and scams fell to $51 million — down 85.6%.