MetaMask denies vulnerability that led to 5000 ETH exploit

Taylor Monahan had earlier claimed that the exploit worth 5000 ETH happened in late December 2022 due to a security vulnerability in MetaMask. MetaMask has played this down through a tweet wherein it has denied any such claim. MetaMask has said that it is not a MetaMask-specific exploit, calling the statement by Taylor incorrect.

MetaMask has further said that 5,000 ETH were stolen from different addresses across eleven blockchains. The statement is based on data that makes a claim evident.

As of the writing of this article, MetaMask’s security team is collaborating to discover the source of the vulnerability. Holders are advised to save Recovery Phrase offline and to safeguard their cryptocurrency in a hardware wallet.

To talk a bit more about the attack, it reportedly targets experienced individuals who have expertise in keeping their digital assets safe. This comes as a surprise since newcomers remain the target in the majority of situations. Attacks leverage the lack of understanding and knowledge in the field of digital assets, making newcomers vulnerable. However, experienced individuals seem to have fallen victim to this attack.

Taylor has described how hackers carried out the attack. They have clarified that this was a secondary attack done between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. UTC. This is in contrast to the primary theft transactions that are carried out in the time window of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. UTC. Meaning, it was carried out during the after-hours, followed up by drains happening after 4 hours of the theft.

Attackers generally swap the token for ETH inside the wallet belonging to the victim. It is further swapped to BTC through a controlled swapper. It takes almost one week for a hacker to wash away the holdings of the tokens through a crypto mixer.

This happens to be the portion of Taylor’s tweet that has forced MetaMask to issue a clarification. Per Taylor’s tweet, hackers use MM Swaps, Uniswap, or Ox to perform the attack. And this is precisely where MetaMask, one of the best crypto wallets, has objected to the tweet, saying that it has not encountered any vulnerability that could have led to the 5000 ETH exploit.

The hacker could return hours after the initial attack, which is a fact that victims miss out on. Not simply for a few hours; a hacker could return months or even days after the initial attack. However, according to Taylor’s tweet, they will undoubtedly return to do more harm, regardless of how much there may be.

The community appears to question the security aspect of MetaMask Wallet; however, they remain safe based on MetaMask’s claims. It enables users to store ETH or ERC-20 tokens while simultaneously hosting decentralized applications on the network.

MetaMask has responded to Taylor’s claim. It remains to be seen if the developer replies to the wallet provider denying the allegations or claims.