AI Protocol Hack

TOTAL LOST $4.3M
Medium Phishing

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2024 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #466 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

On the 1st of March 2024, $4.3M was fished from an ALI token holder.

Details of the Exploit

The hack targeted wallet 0x7653C936…6A744E, where 113,102,183 ALI Utility Tokens were stolen using the Inferno Drainer service. In response, a rapid community governance vote was conducted, leading to the burning of the stolen tokens.

Block Data Reference

Exploiter:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x2ee9a175…621edb

Victim:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x7653C936…6A744E

Drain TX:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc943ea89…9417cc

This is classified as a Phishing Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project AI Protocol
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Phishing
Classification Other
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type RWA
Affected Token ALI
Official Website afiprotocol.xyz/
Protocol Twitter/X @afiprotocol_xyz
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
AI & Big Data Ethereum Ecosystem Web3 Paal Ecosystem
Protocol Links
GitHub Discord

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.

Technical Knowledge Deep understanding of phishing and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in AI Protocol's contract logic - root cause: other
Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing to exploit the vulnerability within a single atomic block
Obfuscation Plan A strategy to launder and move stolen funds - typically through mixers, cross-chain bridges, or decentralized DEX swaps to resist tracing

What Auditors Should Check

Could this have been caught in audit? Likely — with a thorough Phishing audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $4.3M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to AI Protocol, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (March 2024).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Phishing are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Phishing 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.

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Security Audit History

Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Phishing Attacks examples →

Phishing Attacks

Sources & References

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