Incident Overview
A flash loan attack was carried out on the Cupid/Venus liquidity pair. The attacker profited $78.6k.
The attacker took advantage of a vulnerability in the logic of the $Cupid contract, which allowed attacker to conduct a couple of transactions using an unverified contract. The attacker flash loaned the token in this transaction interacting with the contract in this transaction:
https://bscscan.com/tx/0xed348e1d…09c079
Attacker address: https://bscscan.com/address/0xdf2984cf…b026b1
Attacker contract address: https://bscscan.com/address/0x40bb1302…0cb6da
0x81d3ec77438b4e99aa99ba25b1dbc3fea317fe3b0x81d3ec77438b4e99aa99ba25b1dbc3fea317fe3b
Incident Report
Protocol Information
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 Cupid, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (August 2022).
- Verify all logic paths related to Flash Loan Attack are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Flash Loans 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:
Learn to Prevent the Next Cupid
The Cupid 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.