Drift Protocol drained $270M via Solana durable nonces

On March 23, attackers drained at least $270 million from the Drift Protocol by exploiting Solana’s durable nonces, with the incident executing in under a minute after more than a week of preparation. The attackers used pre-signed administrative transfers and had obtained the two signatures required by Drift’s five-member Security Council multisig, while creating four durable nonce accounts that day. The rapid execution contrasted with the extended setup period that enabled the compromise.

Durable nonces are a Solana transaction feature that replaces the expiring recent blockhash with a fixed nonce stored in an on-chain account. Solana transactions normally include a recent blockhash that expires after about 60 to 90 seconds, and durable nonces provide an alternative to that short-lived value. A durable nonce can remain valid indefinitely until the transaction is submitted, allowing the transaction to reference the fixed on-chain nonce rather than a transient blockhash.

The durable-nonce mechanism exists for legitimate operational reasons, including hardware wallets, offline signing setups, and institutional custody solutions. The nonce is maintained in an on-chain account and retains its validity until submission, which differentiates it from the standard recent blockhash lifecycle. Implementations therefore use durable nonces to provide a fixed on-chain value that transactions can reference when the standard short-lived blockhash model is unsuitable.

Drift Protocol’s Security Council is a multisignature configuration that requires at least two of five members to sign administrative transactions. This two-of-five threshold applies to administrative-level actions governed by the council and determines when such transactions can be executed. The attacker had obtained valid signatures from two council members, which satisfied the multisig requirement and allowed administrative transactions to proceed.

The attacker used durable nonces to pre-sign administrative transfer transactions weeks before they were executed. A nonce-based approach allowed those pre-signed transactions to remain valid until submission instead of depending on a short-lived recent blockhash. The attacker did not compromise private keys but obtained the two required signatures through unauthorized or misrepresented transaction approvals. On March 23, four durable nonce accounts were created in connection with the pre-signing process; two of those accounts were associated with legitimate council members and two were controlled by the attacker. The actual execution of the administrative transfers occurred in under a minute, while the preparation for the operation took more than a week.

Drift Protocol was drained of at least $270 million after attackers used Solana’s durable nonce feature to pre-sign administrative transfer transactions weeks before executing them. The pre-signed transactions remained valid until submission, enabling the attackers to satisfy the protocol’s multisig requirement and execute the transfers in under a minute after more than a week of preparation, resulting in a rapid, large-scale financial loss.