How much was lost in the Convex Finance hack?

The Convex Finance hack resulted in $12K in losses on June 23, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the Convex Finance exploit?

The Convex Finance exploit utilized Other. 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.

Convex Finance Hack

TOTAL LOST $12K

Low Jun 23, 2022 Other

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1916 By amount stolen

Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

A DNS attack was conducted on Convex Finance. The hacker managed to create a contract with a similar address, prompting users to sign approval without noticing the substitution.

Details of the Exploit

Convex Finance, a protocol offering boosted rewards for Curve liquidity providers and stakers.

Hackers changed the original website address with the original contract to a copy of the website with a fake contract address.

Original contract address: 0xF403C135…8AAE31

Malicious contract address: 0xF403a2c1…87AE31.

The hackers managed to recreate the address of the contract, very similar to the address of the Convex contract, and the users did not notice the substitution, paying attention to the first 4 or last 4 characters thinking there is no problem and signed the malicious approval transaction. In total, 15,968 $CVXCRV and 433 $CRV were lost.

Block Data Reference

Scammer address: https://etherscan.io/address/0xb7326148…5af9aa

Malicious contract address: https://etherscan.io/address/0xF403a2c1…87AE31

Accounts that approved malicious contract:

1) https://etherscan.io/address/0x496e53c3…9d1b4f

2) https://etherscan.io/address/0x4ffc5f22…7a03e7

3) https://etherscan.io/address/0x5b186c93…688e4b

4) https://etherscan.io/address/0x62430109…5412c1

5) https://etherscan.io/address/0x92557b6f…7ed4c9

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Convex Finance

Date of Incident June 23, 2022

Attack Technique Other

Classification Yield Aggregator

Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Yield

Affected Token CVX

Official Website www.convexfinance.com/

Protocol Twitter/X @ConvexFinance

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 other 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 Convex Finance's contract logic - root cause: yield aggregator

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? Likely — with a thorough Other audit checklist and test coverage

Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $12K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Convex Finance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (June 2022).

Verify all logic paths related to Other 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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Security Audit History

Audit Report 1 Report

Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://thedefiant.io/convex-exploit/
02
Source 2 https://convexfinance.medium.com/post-mortem-of-events-june-23-3…
03
Web Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20220707152049/https://www.convexfin…

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Other
Root Cause Yield Aggregator
Year 2022

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