Key Points:
MetaMask said that recent tweets by Taylor Monahan falsely claimed that large-scale wallet theft resulted from MetaMask's vulnerability.
Developer data shows that 5,000 ETH was stolen from different addresses on 11 blockchains.
The security team is working with others in the Web3 wallet space to investigate the source of this exploit.
MetaMask had denied allegations of wallet vulnerability when a developer claimed that a large amount of ETH was stolen from MetaMask in late 2022 because of this issue.
Web3 wallet MetaMask said on Twitter today that recent tweets by Taylor Monahan claimed that large-scale wallet theft resulted from a MetaMask vulnerability, which is incorrect.
The claim that 5,000 ETH was stolen from MetaMask is incorrect. The data shows that 5,000 ETH were stolen from different addresses on 11 blockchains.
According to Monahan, a MetaMask developer, approximately 5,000 ETH has been taken from the wallets of crypto veterans across different chains since December 2022.
The continuing breach specifically targets “OGs who are pretty safe,” the developer said on Twitter, however, it is unclear how the clever hacker is doing this.
According to the developer, the hacker would perform a secondary steal in the hours after their original heist in order to acquire assets and dust that they missed the first time. Large-scale thefts are committed by converting assets into ETH inside the victims wallets and subsequently into Bitcoin through a controlled swapper. After a week, crypto gets washed through a tough crypto mixer to make it traceable.
Monahan also cautioned cryptocurrency veterans that the vulnerability differs from conventional phishing efforts or random crooks. It does not target newcomers, but rather individuals with some expertise in protecting their digital assets. As a result, the developer encouraged anyone who has assets linked to a single private key to transfer their money, divide up their assets, or get a hardware wallet.
The security team is investigating the origins of this attack in collaboration with others in the Web3 wallet industry. Users should, as usual, safely store seed phrases offline and save extra crypto in hardware wallets.