The crypto industry has been shaken by the "atomic" exploit.
A noncustodial-decentralized wallet, Atomic Wallet, users have reportedly lost over $35 million worth of crypto assets in a recent hack.
According to the on-chain investigator ZachXBT, the five most substantial losses alone contribute to around $17 million, with the largest victim losing almost $8 million in Tether (USDT).
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In a separate tweet, ZachXBT predicted that the amount of stolen assets can "surpass $50M." The investigator claimed they keep "finding more and more victims sadly."
According to the information disseminated by Atomic Wallet on Twitter, an investigation is underway to determine the cause of the attack. Various complaints by users include loss of tokens, wiped transaction histories, and in some cases, entire crypto portfolios being stolen.
On June 4th, the Atomic Wallet team updated its users via a now-deleted tweet:
The investigation is still ongoing in a joint effort with the leading security companies. The team is working on possible attack vectors. Nothing yet confirmed.
However, on June 5th, the Atomic Wallet revealed that "less than 1% of <the company's> monthly active users have been affected." Based on the data, it can be estimated that around 700 users were affected by the hack.
As victims grapple with their losses, the Atomic Wallet team has requested to provide extensive information, including internet providers, use of virtual private networks (VPNs), and storage of seed phrases.
Despite Atomic Wallet's attempt to calm down the community, dozens of users continue to report losses, with some criticizing Atomic's attempt to lower the extent of the damages. One Twitter user noted:
% doesn't matter, hacker intend to focus on big fund wallet only.
One of the victims affected by the exploit is a Turkish resident and a cybersecurity expert by profession, Emre, who lost nearly $1 million in crypto assets earned from bug bounty programs. His pilfered assets include Bitcoin (BTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Litecoin (LTC), Ether (ETH), USDT, USD Coin (USDC), BNB (BNB), and Polygon (MATIC).
Some members of the Telegram community suggested that the exploit might have originated from an outdated dependency package. Dependency packages define the relationship between tasks within a program, including their execution order and the required libraries.
The incident adds to a growing list of recent cryptocurrency hacks, including the $7.5 million exploit of Jimbos Protocol and a malicious proposal that gained control over Tornado Cash's governance in May. As investigations continue, Atomic Wallet users hope for a swift resolution and recovery of their lost assets.
