@tayvano_ on twitter is one of the must follow accounts... She is formerly of MEW (My Ether Wallet), and is now attached to Metamask... and she is a no nonsense sort of woman that does so much behind the scenes work for Ethereum and crypto in general.
... but when she posts (and not slamming someone down with her sometimes sharp wit...), it is often a mix of faintly scary or disturbing things.
These last couple of days was no different. A couple of days ago, she posted a bunch of Ethereum addresses and asked any of the owners to contact her immediately... even if it was months in the future. That was a bit weird and somewhat disturbing in itself... but quite mysterious.
... and then, this bombshell broke. Since December 2022, she has uncovered a huge wallet draining operation. Now, many of these tend to be simple scams or phishing tricks (I recently fell for one myself and lost a bunch of ENS tokens... that stung, and I'm still kicking myself for being so stupid). In this space, we often tout personal responsibility and the immutable nature of crypto... and sometimes, that just turns to victim blaming.
So, when this wallet draining operation was uncovered and revealed... and @tayvano_ said that they have rekt OGs and highly secure individuals... well, this is something to be quite scared about. I mean, there were even two genesis addresses that got emptied!
Even scarier... there is no pattern to the thefts... No consistent wallet provider, hardware and software wallets, no consistent OS, no consistent anything... and people with highly secure practices have gone down as well (although, all it takes is a simple mistake...). It appears that seeds are compromised... as there are transactions across addresses and blockchains (not just EVM blockchains but also BTC/LTC and others... so that points to a master key compromise). Not just seed phrases, but also with passphrases (although, I wasn't too clear on that one...).
So, it appears that there is somewhere in the ecosystem... a leak of master seeds, and this spells some serious trouble. Is it safe to move... should we move? Or just sit tight? At the moment, it looks like the thieves are going after large holders... and draining wallets in waves.
It is seriously nerve-wracking... especially as after two days of solid investigation by leading crypto developers and investigators... nothing has been found to point to a weakness anywhere!
So, time to sit tight... and play ostrich... wait and see what the smarter people manage to track down, and to see who is vulnerable... or not.
Good luck! A timely reminder that we are out in the wild wild lands again...
I can also be found cross-posting at:
Publish0x
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