Galxe protocol experiences DNS attack, losses top $150K and still growing

October 7, 2023 Alex Rustok

The website of Web3 community platform Galxe was offline for about an hour on Oct. 6. Galxe reported on X (formerly Twitter) that its website was down at 14:44 UTC, confirming 40 minutes later that it had experienced a security breach affecting its Domain Name System (DNS) record. It warned against visiting the domain until the situation was remedied. 

At the time of writing, Galxe had not confirmed that its website was safe to use again. After the website was restored, some X posters were reporting that it was blocked by Google.

One Web3 cybersecurity service explained:

“Their DNS records have been modified to redirect to a phishing web-site that drains users wallets.”

Crypto detective ZachXBT reported that funds were being stolen from Galxe. The wallet ZachXBT linked to the exploit continued to gather funds after the Galxe website came back online, hovering around $160,000 at 17:15 UTC, according to DeBank.

ZachXBT suggested a link between the Galxe exploiter and the party that attacked the Balancer protocol on Sept. 19. That was the second attack on Balancer in the span of a month.

The second attack on Balancer led to losses of $238,000. The Balancer team called the incident a social engineering attack on its DNS server carried out by a crypto wallet drainer called Angel Drainer. Blockchain security firm SlowMist suggested that the attacker was associated with Russia.

Losses to Web3 projects increased dramatically in the third quarter of this year, as compared with Q3 2022, according to a recent report from security platform Immunefi. Attacks rose from 30% to 76% year-on-year, and losses reached close to $686 million in Q3 2023. The biggest loss in that period was from the Mixin hack on Sept. 25. 

At 21:25 UTC, a spokesperson for Galxe contacted Cointelegraph to provide a statement that she said would later be posted on X. The statement read, “The Galxe website is offline. We will bring it back online once the correct DNS records are propagated globally. Your funds and information are safe as long as no approval of any transaction on Galxe has been made in the past 8 hrs. […] We took back the domain ownership at 9am PST, October 6th, and enhanced the security protection of the account with [domain registrar service] Dynadot. […] In our efforts to address this situation, we have engaged with the appropriate law enforcement authorities. 

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Update on Oct. 6, 21:45 UTC: This article has been updated to include a statement provided by Galxe.