BitMart Exchange Hack

TOTAL LOST $196M
Critical #49 All-Time Access Control

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2021 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #49 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Dexs Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The BitMart Exchange became a victim of a hack attended of $196 million in losses. The hack was first confirmed by a third-party security firm PeckShield.

Details of the Exploit

BitMart is a global cryptocurrency exchange that allows users in 180+ countries to buy and sell over 1,000 digital currencies and tokens.

BitMart faced a serious problem with the security of its assets, which led to extraordinary losses for the company. PeckSield noticed a suspicious transaction of $10 million to a hot wallet that was refferred to as a 'BitMart Hacker'. The attack was carried out in two networks BSC - $96 million, Ethereum - $100 million.

Unfortunately the scammers could not be identified as the investigation is still ongoing

Block Data Reference

The attacker's addresses:

- Ethereum:

1) https://etherscan.io/address/0x39fb0dcd…edf270

2) https://etherscan.io/address/0x4bb7d802…9f7091

- BSC:

1) https://bscscan.com/address/0x25fb126b…e16c61

Transactions:

Withdrawing $SHIB tokens from BitMart:

- ETH: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x6afb7309…9e81e8

- BSC: https://bscscan.com/tx/0x83432119…90d86d

This is classified as a Access Control Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project BitMart Exchange
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Access Control
Classification CeFi
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2 View Post-Mortem #3

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Dexs
Affected Token BMC
Official Website www.bitmart.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @BitMartExchange
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Ethereum Ecosystem
Protocol Links

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 Operational-security tradecraft (phishing, malware, leaked seed phrases, or insider access) to obtain treasury signing authority
Capital Required Minimal capital - only enough to cover gas while draining the compromised accounts
On-Chain Access Valid signing authority over the compromised wallets / multisig signers, allowing direct transfer of funds or stake authorization
Target Reconnaissance Identification of BitMart Exchange's high-value treasury accounts and the authority / multisig structure controlling them
Execution Speed Speed to drain the compromised accounts before the team detects the breach and revokes signing authority or freezes the assets
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 Access Control audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to BitMart Exchange, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (December 2021).

  • 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.

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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

Sources & References

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