The Warning by Solana Foundation About Security Event

Solana Foundation warned about the security event with Mailchimp. According to an email sent to users, an unauthorized actor accessed and exported certain user data from the Solana Foundation’s Mailchimp instance.

Solana Foundation is the non-profit organization of the Solana Network. On January 14th, 2023, it disclosed a security incident which involved its email service provider Mailchimp.

The email sent to users stated that the Foundation was informed by Mailchimp on January 12th, 2023 that “an unauthorized actor accessed and exported certain user data from the Solana Foundation’s Mailchimp instance”.

The Solana Foundation stated that “Based on the information we have received from Mailchimp, the affected information may have included, inter alia, email addresses, names, and Telegram usernames, in each case only to the extent users provided any such information. Mailchimp advised that the incident did not affect passwords or credit card information”.

However, till now the affected users by this event remained unclear. And at press time, there was no official announcement from Solana or Mailchimp regarding the event.

It must be noted that this was not the first time crypto companies having security concerns with Mailchimp. Back in August 2022, Mailchimp suspended its services to crypto content creators and the platforms associated with crypto news updates. Moreover, the users started to experience issues logging into accounts, followed by notices of service interruptions.

Mailchimp then stated that “across the tech industry, malicious actors are increasingly deploying an array of sophisticated phishing and social engineering tactics targeting data and information from crypto-related companies”.

It further said that “in response to a recent attack targeting Mailchimp’s crypto-related users, we’ve taken proactive measures to temporarily suspend account access for accounts where we detected suspicious activity while we investigate the incident further”.

Earlier this month, a Solana executive said that the platform is still gaining new users despite FTX’s collapse.

The washout of crypto exchange FTX hasn’t kept the Solana network from attracting users and developers, according to Austin Federa, head of strategy and communications at the Solana Foundation.

In an interview, Federa told that the network has seen an increase in on-chain activity despite the FTX contagion. “What you’ve seen is real staying power for both users and developers to build on the network,” he said.

Federa further said “You’re not really seeing any projects migrate off of Solana that need the performance and power of the network. There’s a lot of stuff that you can only build on Solana, and those developers are continuing to build here”.