Frax Finance Reports Domain Hijacking Incident

Frax Finance, a prominent decentralized cross-chain protocol, has warned its users, urging them not to use the frax.finance and frax.com domains until further notice.

The company’s founder, Sam Kazemian, has advised caution, emphasizing resolving the domain name issue before resuming normal operations.

Frax Finance Faces Domain Hijacking

The incident occurred early Wednesday when Frax Finance’s domain was hijacked. While the website currently points to the correct nameserver and loads the authentic Frax user interface, the exact nature of the breach remains unclear.

“The current nameserver belongs to us, and it is the real Frax UI,” explained Frax founder Sam Kazemian. “However, since we haven’t received any information from name.com, the domain registrar, regarding the root cause of the original issue, we cannot be 100% certain that it’s safe to use frax.finance until the matter is fully resolved.”

Please don’t use https://t.co/cADe5RLjqv and https://t.co/AcTF8hlzaS domains until further notice.

If you know anyone at @namedotcom please reach out asap. https://t.co/v0KlM5FoLk

— Frax Finance (¤, ¤) 🦇🔊 (@fraxfinance) October 31, 2023

Fortunately, there have been no reports of stolen user funds in the recent Frax Finance incident. Kazemian and his team are puzzled by the events and have not identified any compromises to their email or password security.

“It doesn’t appear that we made any mistakes on our end,” Kazemian stated. “Until we receive confirmation that our account is secure and the issue is fully resolved, we cannot confidently claim that it is safe to use the frax.finance domain.”

In an update, Frax Finance has stated that Name.com has contacted them and assured them that the domains frax.finance and frax.com have been redirected back to their correct nameservers and settings.

Rising Threat of DNS Hijacking in the Crypto Space

DNS hijacking, the redirection of users to malicious sites that closely mimic the authentic ones to collect user credentials, is a growing concern in the crypto space.

On October 6, the web3 community platform Galxe experienced a DNS attack that disrupted its website via its Dynadot account. As a precaution, Galxe advised users not to connect their wallets, perform transactions, or disconnect their wallets until the issue was resolved.

Another incident on September 20 also saw the Balancer frontend targeted in a DNS attack, which resulted in the theft of over $238,125 from the protocol. The attacker sent the funds to an address associated with ‘Angel Drainer.’ This attack prompted users to approve a malicious contract, risking their wallet contents unknowingly.

In 2022, the decentralized finance (DeFi) project Convex Finance faced a similar situation when its original URLs were compromised, redirecting users to malicious websites.

Frax Finance, founded in 2019 by Sam Kazemian, Travis Moore, and Jason Huan, is a decentralized protocol. Formerly known as Decentral Bank, its mission is to provide stability and decentralization through FRAX, a fractional-algorithmic stablecoin.