How much was lost in the CBDAO hack?

The CBDAO hack resulted in $84K in losses on October 09, 2020.

What attack technique was used in the CBDAO exploit?

The CBDAO 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.

CBDAO Hack

TOTAL LOST $84K

Low Oct 09, 2020 Rugpull ethereum

Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1589 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

The contract deployer took advantage of a hidden minting backdoor in the SBREE smart contract. SBREE tokens were minted in the amount of 50K tokens and converted to BREE tokens.

Mint transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x3bf7b06d…1db9d2

Migration:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xd592c3de…fa4677

The address which received new tokens started to dump them in multiple transactions:

https://etherscan.io/token/0x4639cd8c…1c792f?a=0x85c90f36…1bcf15

Incident Report

Protocol / Project CBDAO

Date of Incident October 09, 2020

Affected Chain(s) ethereum

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Other

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token BREE

Official Website coinbreeder.com/

Protocol Twitter/X @CoinBreeder

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

Cosmos Ecosystem Ethereum Ecosystem Injective Ecosystem Gnosis 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 rugpull and Solidity and EVM internals

Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup

On-Chain Access Ability to interact with ethereum smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract

Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in CBDAO's contract logic - root cause: other

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 CBDAO, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (October 2020).

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://t.me/coinbreederDAO
02
Web Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20200717085534/https://coinbreeder.com/

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Other
Year 2020

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