Incident Overview
Bithumb, South Korea's leading virtual currency exchange, suffered a hack resulting in a loss of cryptocurrencies worth $30 million.
Bithumb noticed abnormal access and as a result, moved a large amount of Ethereum to its cold wallet. Despite this, hackers managed to steal cryptocurrencies valued at about $30,000,000. Bithumb has assured that the stolen cryptocurrencies will be covered by them and all remaining assets are being transferred to a cold wallet for safety.
Stolen funds:
- Cryptocurrencies worth $30M
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 Bithumb, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (June 2018).
- 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.
Free TrialRelated Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next Bithumb
The Bithumb 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.