The Binance-owned Trust Wallet suffered a hack that led to the loss of about $7 million, with efforts underway to compensate affected users and weed out crypto scammers trying to exploit the situation.
The official Trust Wallet account on X announced on December 26 that it identified a security incident affecting Trust Wallet Browser Extension version 2.68 only. The company announced that users should disable this version and upgrade to 2.69 via the correct Chrome link.
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The company confirmed that mobile-only users and all other browser extension versions were not impacted.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also acknowledged the incident, posting on X, “So far, $7m affected by this hack. @TrustWallet will cover. User funds are SAFU. Appreciate your understanding for any inconveniences caused. 🙏The team is still investigating how hackers were able to submit a new version.”
He responded to an X user who suggested that the hack could be an inside job by someone working on the team, commenting “most likely.”
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Meanwhile, the Trust Wallet handle on X reposted updates from CEO Eowyn Chen, who on December 29 stated that while 2,596 affected wallet addresses were identified, the company received around 5,000 claims. This indicated a “significant number of false or duplicate submissions attempting to access victims’ reimbursements,” according to her, as the verification of victims’ claims continues.
When announcing its acquisition in 2018, Binance described Trust Wallet as a “secure, open source, decentralized and anonymous Ethereum wallet application that supports Ethereum and over 20,000 different Ethereum based tokens”.
It was launched in November 2017.
