CoinDash Hack

TOTAL LOST $7.7M
Medium Frontend Attack ethereum

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #357 By amount stolen
Year 2017 Incident year

Incident Report

Protocol / Project CoinDash
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) ethereum
Attack Technique Frontend Attack
Classification Protocol Logic
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

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 frontend attack 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 CoinDash's contract logic - root cause: protocol logic
Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing including MEV-awareness for frontrunning
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? Likely — with a thorough Frontend Attack audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to CoinDash, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (July 2017).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Frontend Attack 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

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Sources & References

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