Incident Overview
The attacked contacted with Bitstamp team and sent a number of attachments via email. One of these, UPE_application_form.doc, contained obfuscated malicious VBA script. When opened, this script ran automatically and pulled down a malicious file from IP address 185.31.209.145, thereby compromising the machine. Ultimately, the attackers were able to access two servers containing the wallet.dat file for Bitstampβs hot wallet and the passphrase for that file.
On 4th January, the attacker drained the Bitstamp wallet.
Bitstamp lost 18,866 BTC from its hot wallet, worth approximately $5,263,614 at a time when the price of bitcoin averaged $279.
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 Bitstamp, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (January 2015).
- 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 Bitstamp
The Bitstamp 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.