BitoPro Hack

TOTAL LOST $2.2M
Medium Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2019 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #630 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

An unknown user of the Taiwanese exchange BitoPro falsified a deposit in the XRP cryptocurrency and withdrew 7 million coins ($2.17 million) from the exchange. The mechanism of this exploit was described in detail by the Bitrue exchange:

https://twitter.com/BitrueOfficial/status/1123992201015509002

The attacker claimed to have sent 330,000 XRP, but actually transferred only 0.003255 XRP marked as a partial payment "tfPartialPayment".

According to XRPScan, the attacker sent a lot of payments to the BitoPro wallet address, the value of which did not exceed 0.003255 XRP on average. Also, the registry displays two transactions of 3 million XRP, which were successfully credited to the account by the exchange:

https://xrpscan.com/account/rERfHy4YmDbKxsuFmzPBhMQCGyFrAGvbra

Incident Report

Protocol / Project BitoPro
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification CeFi
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2 View Post-Mortem #3

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Official Website www.bitopro.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @BitoEX_Official
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Ethereum Ecosystem Polygon Ecosystem BNB Chain 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 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 BitoPro'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 BitoPro, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (May 2019).

  • 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.

Free Trial

Sources & References

Browse all hacks

These hacks used the same attack technique. Understanding the pattern helps prevent future exploits.

DeFiTuna $570K
Other
Cascade $1.3M
Other
Lumi Finance $264K
Other
Hinkal $820K
Other
AIDCToken $121K
Other
Polymarket $3.0M
Other

Learn to Prevent the Next BitoPro

The BitoPro 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.

Start Free Trial Browse Attack Library
Recreate exploit patterns safely Free Trial