Raydium Protocol is the latest victim in Solana’s hacking narrative

• An AMM on Solana’s network, Raydium Protocol, was compromised.
• Through the protocol’s liquidity pools, the hacker obtained owner authority and gained access to enormous sums of money.

On December 16, Radiyum Protocol, an order book Automated Market Maker (AMM) on the Solana [SOL] network, was compromised. According to reports, the hacker took money out of different Raydium liquidity pools without having any LP tokens of their own or burning them.

An exploit on Raydium is being investigated that affected liquidity pools. Details to follow as more is known

⁰Initial understanding is owner authority was overtaken by attacker, but authority has been halted on AMM & farm programs for now
Attacker accnthttps://t.co/ZnEgL1KSwz

— Raydium (@RaydiumProtocol) December 16, 2022

What method did the hacker use?

The team at Radium Protocol was able to determine how the attack was carried out with the assistance of numerous organisations. The hacker allegedly assumed owner authority, giving him access to these funds.

1/ Initial Post-Mortem: Raydium is working w 3rd-party auditors and teams across Solana to gather additional info. As of now, a patch is in place preventing further exploits from the attacker.

The following includes info up to now. Big thanks to all teams providing support https://t.co/yKRdA6BAqv

— Raydium (@RaydiumProtocol) December 16, 2022

The attack started when a compromised private key and a Trojan attack were sent to the pool’s owner account. The hacker used the owner’s account to call a function that gathered protocol and trading fees after gaining access.

The hacker used an extensive list of pools as targets. The SOL-USDC, SOL-USDT, and RAY-USDC pools were a few of these. The hacker left behind a total of about $4.3 million in funds.

5/ Pools affected:

SOL-USDC
SOL-USDT
RAY-USDC
RAY-USDT
RAY-SOL
stSOL-USDC
ZBC-USDC
UXP-USDC
whETH-USDC

Approx total funds exploited by attacker

RAY 1,879,638
stSOL 3,214
whETH 39.3
USDC 1,094,613
SOL120,512
UXP 21,068,507
ZBC9,758,647
USDT110,427

Total USD: ~4,395,237

— Raydium (@RaydiumProtocol) December 16, 2022

SOL, staked SOL, and USDC were among the stolen assets.

Solana’s Following Steps

The owner authority of the account was revoked by Raydium Protocol right away. The developers have retained 10% of the total amount taken as a bounty in an effort to encourage the attacker to return the money. The hackers would get the reward in their account if they returned the money.

7/ If the attacker returns the funds, 10% of the total amount will be offered and considered as a white-hat bug bounty. The attacker is encouraged to reach out through normal channels or via the below address

0x6d3078ED15461E989fbf44aE32AaF3D3Cfdc4a90

— Raydium (@RaydiumProtocol) December 16, 2022

Considering SOL

Solana had a difficult 2022 due to numerous outages, FTX exposure, and now hackers attacking its ecosystem’s protocols.

These events significantly impacted its TVL. DeFiLlama reports that over the last four months, Solana’s TVL has dropped from 1.37 billion to $259.74 million.

It would be very challenging for Solana to emerge from this crypto winter if things carried on in this manner.

Nevertheless, there were a few things for which Solana users could be thankful.

Data from SOLSCAN indicates that over the past week, the Solana network’s fees have increased. The TPS for Solana increased concurrently.

When Solana’s bad spell will end is still unknown. SOL, on the other hand, was currently trading at $12.31. In the following 24 hours up until press time, its price decreased by 11.95%, according to CoinMarketCap.