AirDAO Hack

TOTAL LOST $440K
Low Access Control

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2024 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1025 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Yield Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

AirDAO faced a security breach, losing about 440K USD. The attacker exploited the wallet, leading to a loss of control over funds.

Details of the Exploit

A breach at AirDAO resulted in the unauthorized transfer of 126.5 $ETH and 41.61M $AMB tokens. The attacker seized control of the victim's wallet, leading to the loss of access and control over the funds. The first wallet removed liquidity from ETH/AMB pool and the second one just drained the AMB treasury.

The attacker then engaged in transactions across multiple exchanges, including #Binance, #MEXC, #ChangeNOW, #KuCoin, and #BitMart. Stolen funds were converted to $ETH and subsequently deposited into @MEXC_Official via various addresses.

Block Data Reference

Removing liquidity:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x2e0087b7…ec91b4

AMB draining:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x46d0f576…25ff1e

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xdab3475f…c343fe

Example of MEXC deposits:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xafde2ebe…e8edda

This is classified as a Access Control Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project AirDAO
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Access Control
Classification Other
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Yield
Affected Token AMB
Official Website airdao.io/
Protocol Twitter/X @airdao_io
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Ethereum Ecosystem DeSci
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 Operational-security tradecraft (phishing, malware, leaked seed phrases, or insider access) to obtain treasury signing authority
Capital Required Minimal capital - only enough to cover gas while draining the compromised accounts
On-Chain Access Valid signing authority over the compromised wallets / multisig signers, allowing direct transfer of funds or stake authorization
Target Reconnaissance Identification of AirDAO's high-value treasury accounts and the authority / multisig structure controlling them
Execution Speed Speed to drain the compromised accounts before the team detects the breach and revokes signing authority or freezes the assets
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 Access Control audit checklist and test coverage

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

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Related Attack Classes

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

See all Access Control Attacks examples →

Access Control Attacks

Sources & References

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