BitKeep Hack

TOTAL LOST $1.2M
Medium Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #801 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

BitKeep wallet was exploited for 1,192,464 $USD. The hacker managed to transfer almost all the stolen funds through TornadoCash.

Details of the Exploit

BitKeep is the multi-chain wallet mostly used for DeFi operations. The smart contract of the project with unverified source code was hacked. The attacker used the swap function to drain funds from addresses that approved various tokens to the project's smart contract.

The stolen tokens were swapped for $BNB and 4368 $BNB was transferred using TornadoCash.

Block Data Reference

Attacker address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x8a4172a7…11b8d0

Malicious contract:

https://bscscan.com/address/0xc3758901…1c2fd8

Malicious transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xd13e68b2…4214e6

Incident Report

Protocol / Project BitKeep
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification CeFi
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Official Website bitkeep.com/en/index
Protocol Twitter/X @BitKeepOS
Team Public / Doxxed
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Ethereum Ecosystem
Protocol Links
Reddit

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 other and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in BitKeep's contract logic - root cause: cefi
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 Other audit checklist and test coverage

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

  • 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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Sources & References

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