Major Solana hack: Drift suspends operations

Key points:

• Drift was hit by an active exploit, with estimated losses between $200M and $270M.
• Deposits and withdrawals have been halted, and the likely cause is a compromised admin key.

Drift, a Solana-based trading platform, confirmed an ongoing attack on its protocol. As a result, both deposits and withdrawals were temporarily suspended. The team said it is working with multiple security firms, bridges, and exchanges to contain the damage.

The attack began more than two hours before Drift made its official announcement. Early estimates put losses at no less than $200 million, with some on-chain data suggesting the total could be closer to $270 million.

Source: X.com

Drift issued a warning on X, urging users not to deposit funds until the investigation is complete. It was later confirmed that withdrawals had also been disabled. Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz noted that signs of the exploit appeared before Drift publicly acknowledged the breach.

Attack Details and Fund Movements

Security researcher Vladimir S suggested the most likely cause was a compromised admin key. According to him, the key was either stolen or misused by its holder to execute malicious changes.

Using this access, the attacker drained funds from several Drift vaults, including JLP Delta Neutral, Solana Super Staking, and Bitcoin Super Staking. One transaction alone involved 41.7 million JLP tokens, worth approximately $155 million.

Other stolen assets included Solana, USDC, cbBTC, and wBTC.

Data from Arkham shows that over $250 million was first moved to an intermediary wallet and then distributed across multiple addresses. Analysts at Lookonchain reported that the attacker began converting the funds into USDC via Jupiter, a Solana-based DEX aggregator.

The funds were then bridged to the Ethereum network and used to purchase ETH. By 5:45 PM UTC on Wednesday, the attacker’s wallet held around 19,913 ETH, valued at roughly $42 million.

Following news of the attack, the DRIFT token dropped more than 20%, trading at around $0.05. Earlier that same day, it had reached $0.68. Solana also declined, falling to $83.82 before partially recovering.