Incident Overview
On Nov 18, 2024, CoinPoker’s hot wallet was compromised across Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, and Polygon, leading to the theft of approximately $2 million in USDT. The attacker gained access to the wallet, swapped the stolen funds into various native tokens on multiple chains, and ultimately funneled them through Tornado Cash to obscure their trail.
The hack involved multiple transactions that suggested CoinPoker’s hot wallet was operating under specific custodial policies. With unauthorized control established, the attacker systematically moved funds into native currencies and took advantage of cross-chain swaps to facilitate laundering. This series of transfers indicates a well-coordinated strategy, leveraging known privacy tools like Tornado Cash, and highlights the ongoing vulnerability of centralized crypto custodial solutions.
Incident Report
Protocol Information
What the Attacker Needed to Succeed
Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to $2M Coin Poker, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2024).
- Verify all logic paths related to Access Control are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control Attacks attack class for patterns
- Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs
Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.
Free TrialRelated Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next $2M Coin Poker
The $2M Coin Poker hack is one of many attacks that skilled auditors are trained to detect before deployment. Master real exploit patterns and defense techniques with hands-on Web3 security training.