Incident Overview
Coinbin employees exploited access to private keys, leading to bankruptcy and shutdown of the project.
An employee of Coinbin allegedly had access to the private keys of multiple accounts. The employee was able to exploit this access to siphon off funds from these accounts. As a result of this exploit, Coinbin was forced to file for bankruptcy and shut down operations, leaving users without access to their funds.
Incident Report
Protocol Information
Market Context at Time of Hack
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 Coinbin, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (February 2019).
- 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 Coinbin
The Coinbin 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.