Fantom Foundation employee loses at least $7 million of crypto in exploit

An employee of the Fantom Foundation lost at least $7 million of crypto in an exploit today, according to on-chain data and comments from Fantom Foundation Director Andre Cronje.

"All foundation funds are secured. A fantom employee however was targeted in an attack and their personal funds were stolen," Cronje told The Block.

An admin in the Fantom Telegram channel said that this was due to a zero-day exploit in the Chrome browser. The admin had said the wallets belonged to the Fantom Foundation and they were tagged as such on blockchain explorers.

A wallet that received the stolen funds contains 4,500 ETH, worth around $7 million.

The exploit was publicly highlighted by a pseudonymous crypto individual known as Spreek on X.

Fantom Foundation funds affected

The Fantom Foundation said later in the day that the affected wallets included about $550,000 of foundation funds.

"The significant majority of Fantom Foundation funds (more than 99%) were unaffected and remain secure," it said in a post on X, adding that the attack is being actively investigated. 

(Updates with comment from Fantom Foundation.)