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
Tether, the issuer of USDT, issued a statement stating that its system was hacked by an external attacker on the 19th of this month and stolen USDT tokens worth approximately $31 million from its Tether Treasury wallet. Attack method (per SlowMist): Wallet Stolen. Reported loss: 31,000,000 USD.
Primary source
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/tether-hack-attacker-reportedly-steals-30-million-of-digital-tokens.html ↗Sourced from
slowmist
Technical record
- chain
- —
- protocol
- Tether
- bug_class
- private-key
- date_occurred
- 2017-11-19
- loss_usd
- —
- source_id
- sm:tether::2017-11-19
Related — same bug class· private-key