How much was lost in the Chessfarm.Tech hack?

The Chessfarm.Tech hack resulted in $168K in losses on November 11, 2020.

What attack technique was used in the Chessfarm.Tech exploit?

The Chessfarm.Tech 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.

Chessfarm.Tech Hack

TOTAL LOST $168K

Low Nov 11, 2020 Rugpull binance

Affected Chain binance Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1361 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Investors of the Chessfarm.Tech project were betrayed due to the project deployers privileged withdrawal access, which enabled the deployer to extract approx. $167k from the project.

Details of the Exploit

The Chessfarm.Tech project was a DEX, deployed on the Binance Smart Chain. The project promised to have tackled problems such as hyperinflation and price dumping through its new fair chess distribution. Only 5% of the staking rewards were supposed to go towards the team in order to fund further developments.

The contract deployer added initial liquidity at:

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0xe2fd4137…426f0b

and made the $CHESS token tradable on pancake swap.

Merely 5 days later the contract deployer used a hidden migration functionality under the reduceReward() function, by invoking it, the deployer received all deposited tokens from the staking smart contract, as can be seen in the following example transactions:

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0xeefee4f7…8d430d

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0x4abde5e6…267ee3

The received tokens were then sold by the contract deployer as can be seen in the example transaction:

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0x777cb336…eb50b1

The deployer managed to gain around $BNB 4000 and decided the funds for Binance BTC tokens at:

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0xd68620c0…62f4e8

The received $BTCB were distributed between different external addresses and deposited into Binance exchange, here an example:

https://www.bscscan.com/address/0x4bf9af80…c89947#tokentxns

The deployer also made sure to remove the liquidity in order to maximize his profit:

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0x52f89a24…7229a2

Block Data Reference

Example Transactions (Reduce Rewards)

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0x50b1a159…22f447

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0xfff49ffe…edcd40

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0x84ddf423…1f93d5

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0x80611a1a…24b18f

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0x2b1818c9…e366f1

Example Transaction (Deployer Dumping)

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0x353ce25e…e4e569

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0xaaf8648a…f391d4

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0x604533dd…49b698

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0xebbf66a6…4c79b3

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Chessfarm.Tech

Date of Incident November 11, 2020

Affected Chain(s) binance

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Other

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token Chess

Official Website chessfarm.tech/

Protocol Twitter/X @ChessFarm

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 binance smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract

Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Chessfarm.Tech'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 Chessfarm.Tech, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 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://chessfarm.tech/
02
Web Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20201106215255/https://chessfarm.tech/

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Other
Year 2020

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