How much was lost in the Carillonium hack?

The Carillonium hack resulted in $59K in losses on September 01, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the Carillonium exploit?

The Carillonium exploit utilized Rugpull. Understanding this attack vector is critical for smart contract auditors and developers building secure DeFi protocols.

How can developers prevent similar smart contract attacks?

Preventing smart contract hacks requires a combination of secure coding practices, thorough security audits, and understanding common attack vectors like reentrancy, oracle manipulation, and access control flaws. Smart Contract Hacking (SCH) provides hands-on training to help developers and auditors identify and prevent vulnerabilities before deployment.

Carillonium Hack

TOTAL LOST $59K

Low Sep 01, 2022 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1681 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The $CAROM project has been rug pulled by the token creator who previously created the rug pull project NeotericFinance.

Details of the Exploit

The scammer deployed a token where 10^15 tokens were minted to his/her address, then scammer created a liquidity pair between CAROM/BNB:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xd9c9e6a3…4d6272

After a short period of time, scammer removed some of the liquidity, made swap and then removed the liquidity again, gaining a profit of 213.27 $BNB:

https://bscscan.com/token/0x2d1e3be4…44d4a1?a=0x8f0d9acb…2387e4

Block Data Reference

Scammer address: https://bscscan.com/address/0x8f0d9acb…2387e4

Dumping transaction: https://bscscan.com/tx/0xf56fd7fe…92a969

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Carillonium

Date of Incident September 01, 2022

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token CAROM

Team Anonymous

Source Code Unverified

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 rugpull 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 Carillonium's contract logic - root cause: token

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? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

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

Verify all logic paths related to Rugpull 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

01
Source 1 https://alert.peckshield.com/detail?id=43ec5945-7d7f-53b0-2e29-1…

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Token
Year 2022

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