Solana Hack Could Have Been Prevented With This Source Code Change?

Even as it is unclear as to what is the exact loss incurred due to the Solana hack, the reason behind it is still unknown. A huge hack in the Solana ecosystem affected over 8,000 wallets on Wednesday, draining out at least $8 million and counting. Assets in the form of SOL and USDC were withdrawn from the wallets by the perpetrators.

Was Solana Hack Preventable?

Responding to the attack, the Solana management said several engineers and security expert firms were trying to find the cause of the hack. One of the many theories being speculated is the possibility of a private key compromise. Meanwhile, Senor Doggo, a Twitter profile that goes with the name, said the hack was avoidable with a different approach. They said having an open source code could have helped the management figure out what went wrong with the hack.

Doggo added that the closed source code is not helping the cause of researchers trying to figure out the issue. The intellectual property protection was unnecessary as it is leading to loss of money, he said.

“The Solana wallet hack demonstrates why it is irresponsible not to have open source code in crypto. Researchers have been working around the clock to discover what the issue is and can’t because the code is closed source. Hundreds of millions lost due to unnecessary IP protection.”

SOL Price Recovering

Earlier on Wednesday, the news of a security compromise on Solana led to a sharp fall in the asset’s price. From trading at around $41, SOL dropped to just over $38 within the space of an hour. However, the price has been steadily recovering since then. As of writing, SOL is trading at $40.31, down 2.38% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

On the other side, assets stored in the hardware wallets are not part of the compromise.  Solana said there was no evidence of any impact on hardware wallets. It said an exploit allowed a malicious actor to drain funds from a number of wallets on Solana.

Anvesh reports major developments around crypto adoption and price analysis. Having been associated with the industry since 2016, Anvesh is a strong advocate of decentralized technologies. Follow Anvesh on Twitter at @AnveshReddyBTC and reach him out at [email protected]

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