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Solana Phantom Hackers Lure Users by Sending Fake Security Updates

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Hackers seem to be forever targeting Solana. Unknown hackers have been distributing nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to Solana crypto users over the past two weeks while disguising them as a new Phantom wallet security update. However, the NFTs are actually malware that is intended to steal the users’ money.

As per BleepingComputer, the hackers are utilizing NFTS called “PHANTOMUPDATE.COM” or “UPDATEPHANTOM.COM” and are posing as members of the Phantom team.

Users are informed when they open the NFT that a new security update for the Phantom wallet has been released and can be downloaded using the included link or the mentioned website.

The mail emphasizes urgency by warning that skipping the phony security update “may result in a loss of cash owing to hackers abusing the Solana network.”

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Solana Phantom Hackers Lure Users by Sending Fake Security Updates 2

Analysts believe it might be related to the Solana wallet hack

The Solana-based wallet heist, which resulted in the theft of almost $8 million from 8,000 wallets in August, such as those belonging to Phantom wallet users, is probably what prompted the urgency element. Later, it was discovered that Slope, a Web3 wallet service built in Solana, had security flaws.

If a victim follows the bogus Phantom update instructions, malware that attempts to steal the user’s browser data, history, cookies, passwords, SSH keys, and other information is downloaded from GitHub.

It is advised that users who may have unintentionally fallen victim to this fraud take security steps such as running an antivirus check on their computer, protecting their cryptocurrency holdings, and changing the passwords on sensitive websites like bank accounts and cryptocurrency trading platforms.

The windll32.exe program, according to VirusTotal, is a password-stealing virus that tries to collect browser data, including history, cookies, and passwords, as well as SSH keys and other details.

Earlier efforts sent a program with the name lib64.exe [VirusTotal], which was known to be MarsStealer, even though the particular password-stealing malware that is now propagating is unclear.

A data-stealing malware software called MarsStealer, which was first released in 2020, steals data from many crypto extensions and wallets and all commonly used web browsers.

The aim of this effort is presumably to acquire crypto wallets and passwords so that threat actors may steal all bitcoin funds and access the victim’s other accounts.

Solana wallet’s fool-proof plan to get rid of spam NFTs

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Phantom, the Solana-based wallet provider, has introduced a new burn feature that enables users to delete spam non-fungible tokens (NFTs) supplied by con artists.

The new feature, which allows users to get a tiny deposit of Solana (SOL) each time they use it, is accessible via the Burn Token button in the Phantom wallet app, according to a blog post from the Phantom team published on 18 August 2022.

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Source: Phantom Blog Post

The blog post read,

“We’re still in the Wild West days of Web3. As the crypto ecosystem grows, so have the number of bad actors looking for ways to steal user’s funds. The rapid growth in popularity of NFTs has led to an increasingly prevalent method of attack for scammers – Spam NFTs.”

Due to Solana’s cheap transaction fees, Phantom stated that the problem has been particularly pervasive there, with bad actors frequently airdropping large numbers of purportedly free NFTs that really include harmful links.

The recipient of spam NFT is typically instructed to click a link to generate a free NFT, but if they do so, their wallet is really depleted of money. Alternatively, the link will request the recipient’s seed phrase, which will have the same effect.

It further read,

“These scams are becoming increasingly more sophisticated. For instance, after a contract address and domain are identified as malicious, scammers can change the metadata of an NFT to try to avoid being blocklisted. It can feel like an endless game of whack-a-mole.”

The action is a part of a larger Phantom initiative to combat spam NFTs and undesirable actors in the market. By alerting users to “any fraudulent transactions that could endanger their assets or permissions” after clicking on dodgy links, the team claimed to be fighting scammers as well.

Solana-based NFT’s wallet provider: Phantom

According to the company, Phantom is one of the most well-liked wallet suppliers for Solana-based NFTs and decentralized fiance (DeFi), with more than 2 million active users each month.

A security flaw at the beginning of August caused the competitor wallet company Slope to lose an estimated $8 million worth of cash on the Solana network.

Austin Fedora, the head of communications at Solana, conducted a post-mortem investigation and discovered that, despite the attack being caused by Slope, 60% of the victims were Phantom users.

According to data from CryptoSlam, Solana hosted the second-largest amount of NFT sales volume in July with $56.1 million, trailing only Ethereum which posted a staggering $535.6 million.

Solana wallet app Phantom grabs 109M funds led by Paradigm

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Phantom, a DeFi wallet app for the Solana ecosystem, has been showered with a lot of attention from both investors and developers alike. The San Francisco-based crypto startup has announced via Twitter of landing a fat $109 million funding exercise led by venture capital firm Paradigm on a $1.2 billion valuation. Others who participated in the round included a16z, Variant, Solana Ventures, and Jump Crypto.

The latest news comes after the startup secured a $9 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz and has gained more than 2 million monthly active users in just six months after launch. Beginning with a humble 40k users, Phantom CEO Brandon Millman noted that the firm has been consistently bringing nearly 100k users per week.

In an interview with TechCrunch Millman stated,

“As the party that’s closest to the end-user, we definitely have a responsibility to protect and educate users. A lot of the work that we’ve spent in the past couple of months has been around user safety-related features.”

In addition to that, the Solana wallet app is also ramping up its presence on mobile, revealing the rollout of an iOS app alongside the latest development, and is slated to release an Android native app in the near future.

Phantom’s future Roadmap

For its next big goal, Phantom is seeking to explore beyond the Solana ecosystem and go multi-chain and add support for another blockchain to its wallet. Having said that, the startup did not specifically divulge where exactly it’s aiming to focus resources, at the time of this post.

However, it is certain that the premier wallet firm is looking to establish support for a blockchain compatible with Ethereum’s EVM stack where most crypto developers have been focusing their attention and where competitors such as MetaMask dominate.

The post further mentions the scope of Multi-chain compatibility which it claimed as expanded opportunities but also comes with the headaches of dealing with multiple ecosystems, which might pose a challenge for a firm like Phantom, that consists of some 20 odd staff at present although the team plans on onboarding more employees with its new funding.

Where is Solana [SOL] price heading?

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As the new year dawned, major altcoin Solana [SOL] seemingly headed for a slow start as it sank by more than 17% in just 3 days only to recover by 6% at $179 along the same time period. Amidst ambitious predictions by the community, the overall market traded in the green on the first day of 2022 fuelling hope for an exciting beginning after a dull December.

At the time of writing, SOL’s price was changing hands at $176 with a 24-hour trading volume of $1.07 billion. The coin surge by 1.81% in the last 24 hours. However, Solana posted a decline of 11.21% in the weekly index. The 5th ranked asset’s market cap stood at $54 billion as per data on Coinmarketcap. With respect to the price technicals, the overall outlook does not look too grim.

Solana [SOL] price technicals analysis

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Where is Solana [SOL] price heading? 5

From the four-hour chart above, in the trading aspect, the Relative Strength Index [RSI] indicator hovering below the 50-median is indicating the dominance of the sellers and the weakening position of the buyers in the coin market. However, the Chaikin Money Flow, [CMF] cruising above the equilibrium layer is indicating an increase in the capital inflow. Riding along a similar trajectory, the green price bars of the Awesome Oscillator [AO] too reiterated the bullish narrative in the near term for the asset’s price action.

Solana which is regarded for its speed and security has another reason to cheer. One of its fastest-growing wallets built for decentralized finance [DeFi] and nonfungible tokens [NFT] known as Phantom has seen incredible growth in 2021 with 1.8 million monthly active users in a span of 9 months. Apart from that in 2021, its users have staked over $16 billion worth of SOL, swapped over $1.3bliion of tokens, and made over 55 million transactions on their favorite dApps or centralized applications.