DAO Maker Vesting Hack

TOTAL LOST $4.0M
Medium Access Control Exploit / Other ethereum

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #469 By amount stolen
Auditors 2 Prior security audits

Incident Overview

The attacker's address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x2708cace…eff92f

DAO Maker vesting smart contracts had vulnerability that allowed a hacker to take ownership of the contract and withdraw the tokens from it. Tokens of DeRace, Showcase, Ternoa, Coinspaid were affected. The attacker initialized the key parameters of init() and changed the owner at the same time.

The attacker invoked emergencyExit() function to withdraw tokens at:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xcb5be974…a54e5f

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x4c273c24…68c879

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x1692a57f…a7d2b7

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xdd017647…0bacc3

The attacker sold tokens at:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xbf38346a…d6e3fd

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x3436af2c…d08c27

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc586a6b9…ceba9e

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x76163daf…1824c8

This is classified as a Access Control Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project DAO Maker Vesting
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) ethereum
Attack Technique Access Control Exploit / Other
Classification Protocol Logic / Other
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Services
Affected Token DAO
Smart Contract Language Solidity
Official Website daomaker.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @TheDaoMaker
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 Operational-security tradecraft (phishing, malware, leaked seed phrases, or insider access) to obtain treasury signing authority
Capital Required Minimal capital - only enough to cover gas while draining the compromised accounts
On-Chain Access Valid signing authority over the compromised wallets / multisig signers, allowing direct transfer of funds or stake authorization
Target Reconnaissance Identification of DAO Maker Vesting's high-value treasury accounts and the authority / multisig structure controlling them
Execution Speed Speed to drain the compromised accounts before the team detects the breach and revokes signing authority or freezes the assets
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 Access Control Exploit / Other audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Certik, RD Auditors — still lost $4.0M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to DAO Maker Vesting, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (September 2021).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Access Control Exploit / Other 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.

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Security Audit History

Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Access Control Attacks examples →

Access Control Attacks

Proof-of-Concept Exploits

1 PoC available
poc-exploits - dao maker vesting
$ DAO Maker Bad Access Controal

On-Chain Evidence & References

Sources & References

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