VERDICT —OUT OF SCOPE
Root cause is private-key / signer compromise — the on-chain contract behaved exactly as written. No pre-deployment source audit or bytecode review reaches the key-custody perimeter; this is operational-security territory (HSM/MPC hygiene, key rotation, hot-wallet isolation). Bytecode would show nothing wrong.
▰ METHOD
PRIVATE KEY
PRIVATE-KEY
Root cause
Root-cause analysis not yet published. The incident description below contains all currently available signal — review the attack transaction directly for definitive forensics.
Forensic narrative
On July 2, 2024, the decentralized AI project Bittensor was attacked, resulting in some Bittensor wallet users being compromised. The hackers stole approximately 32,000 TAO tokens, valued at around $8 million. On-chain investigator ZachXBT suggested that the attack may have been due to a private key leak. However, Bittensor later clarified that the affected users were actually compromised because a malicious Bittensor package had been uploaded to the Python PyPi package manager. Attack method (per SlowMist): Security Vulnerability. Reported loss: $ 8,000,000.
Sourced from
slowmist
Technical record
- chain
- —
- protocol
- Bittensor
- bug_class
- private-key
- date_occurred
- 2024-07-02
- loss_usd
- $8,000,000
- source_id
- sm:bittensor::2024-07-02
Related — same bug class· private-key