Incident Overview
A suspected long-running con likened to the infamous Bitcoin Savings and Trust, Bitcoin Rain finally defaulted on March 28, 2013. Leandro César claimed there was a security breach on his exchange website Mercado Bitcoin. As Bitcoin Rain's funds were stored there, investors in Bitcoin Rain, as well as account holders on Mercado Bitcoin, lost money.
Incident Report
Protocol Information
Market Context at Time of Hack
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 Bitcoin Rain, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (March 2013).
- 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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Learn to Prevent the Next Bitcoin Rain
The Bitcoin Rain 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.