A malicious actor gained unauthorized access to Drift Protocol
Contents
Earlier today, a malicious actor gained unauthorized access to Drift Protocol through a novel attack involving durable nonces, resulting in a rapid takeover of Driftâs Security Council administrative powers.
This was a highly sophisticated operation that appears to have involved multi-week preparation and staged execution, including the use of durable nonce accounts to pre-sign transactions that delayed execution.
Based on our investigation to date:
- This was not the result of a bug in Driftâs programs or smart contracts
- There is no evidence of compromised seed phrases
- The attack involved unauthorized or misrepresented transaction approvals obtained prior to execution, likely facilitated through durable nonce mechanisms and sophisticated social engineering
As a result, approximately $280M was withdrawn from the protocol.
The attacker was able to:
- Pre-position access using durable nonce accounts
- Obtain sufficient multisig approvals (2/5 multisig approval)
- Execute a malicious admin transfer within minutes, gaining control of protocol-level permissions
- Use that control to introduce a …
This was a highly sophisticated operation that appears to have involved multi-week preparation and staged execution, including the use of durable nonce accounts to pre-sign transactions that delayed execution.
Based on our investigation to date:
- This was not the result of a bug in Driftâs programs or smart contracts
- There is no evidence of compromised seed phrases
- The attack involved unauthorized or misrepresented transaction approvals obtained prior to execution, likely facilitated through durable nonce mechanisms and sophisticated social engineering
As a result, approximately $280M was withdrawn from the protocol.
The attacker was able to:
- Pre-position access using durable nonce accounts
- Obtain sufficient multisig approvals (2/5 multisig approval)
- Execute a malicious admin transfer within minutes, gaining control of protocol-level permissions
- Use that control to introduce a …