How much was lost in the Cezar Hard Fork hack?

The Cezar Hard Fork hack resulted in $399K in losses on November 16, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the Cezar Hard Fork exploit?

The Cezar Hard Fork 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.

Cezar Hard Fork Hack

TOTAL LOST $399K

Low Nov 16, 2022 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1075 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Cesar Hard Fork was rugpulled by the token deployer for over 398,748 $USD. The scammers used the privileged mint function.

Details of the Exploit

Cesar Hard Fork is a BEP20 token trading on PancakeSwap. There are two copycat tokens with related deployers. Both $Cesar tokens were rugpulled by the deployers.

rewardHolders() privileged function allowed to mint an unlimited amount of $Cesar tokens to the contract owner. Consequently, pools were drained. The stolen funds accumulated in a single EOA address, and reached 1,212 $BNB in total which is worth 398,748 $USD at the moment.

The accumulated amount was transferred through TornadoCash. Cesar Hard Fork is not a single project of the scammers.

Block Data Reference

Scammer addresses:

https://bscscan.com/address/0xdb783c18…a83b83

https://bscscan.com/address/0x4925b8e1…da8726

Funds accumulated address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x2bb4edcf…f7c119

Drain transaction example:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x48181309…e7381f

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Cezar Hard Fork

Date of Incident November 16, 2022

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token Cezar

Team Anonymous

Source Code Verified On-Chain

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 Cezar Hard Fork'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 Cezar Hard Fork, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 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://twitter.com/PeckShieldAlert/status/1592708485724372992?s=20

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Token
Year 2022

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