How much was lost in the BasketDAO hack?

The BasketDAO hack resulted in $1.2M in losses on March 30, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the BasketDAO exploit?

The BasketDAO exploit utilized Arbitrary External Call. Understanding this attack vector is critical for smart contract auditors and developers building secure DeFi protocols.

How can developers prevent similar smart contract attacks?

Preventing smart contract hacks requires a combination of secure coding practices, thorough security audits, and understanding common attack vectors like reentrancy, oracle manipulation, and access control flaws. Smart Contract Hacking (SCH) provides hands-on training to help developers and auditors identify and prevent vulnerabilities before deployment.

BasketDAO Hack

TOTAL LOST $1.2M

Medium Mar 30, 2022 Arbitrary External Call ethereum

Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #941 By amount stolen

Year 2022 Incident year

Incident Report

Protocol / Project BasketDAO

Date of Incident March 30, 2022

Affected Chain(s) ethereum

Attack Technique Arbitrary External Call

Classification Access Control

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 arbitrary external call and Solidity and EVM internals

Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup

On-Chain Access Ability to interact with ethereum smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract

Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in BasketDAO's contract logic - root cause: access control

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 Arbitrary External Call audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to BasketDAO, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (March 2022).

Verify all logic paths related to Arbitrary External Call 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 Delegatecall & Call Injection Attacks

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

MEDIUM

Attack Vector Arbitrary External Call
Root Cause Access Control
Year 2022

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Incident Report

What the Attacker Needed to Succeed

What Auditors Should Check

Related Attack Classes

Related Hacks - Arbitrary External Call

Learn to Prevent the Next BasketDAO