Incident Overview
On January 14, 2025, BIGO token was exploited through its auto-burn mechanism, resulting in the hacker obtaining nearly all DOGE (about 18k in USD value) from the relevant PancakeSwap pair.
The attack stemmed from the _autoBurn function within the BIGO token’s transfer logic. When the attacker sent a small amount of ETH to the contract, they could set the burnAmount variable. After exchanging a large amount of DOGE for BIGO, they invoked the transfer function, triggering _autoBurn and drastically reducing the BIGO balance in the PancakeSwap pair.
With the pool now misaligned, the attacker swapped back to DOGE at a premium, draining almost all DOGE from the liquidity pool.
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 BIGO, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (January 2025).
- Verify all logic paths related to Other are guarded by proper access controls and input validation
- 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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