Incident Overview
On November 2024, an unknown DCT token on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) suffered an attack, resulting in losses exceeding $428K.
The exploit leveraged a design flaw in the DCT token’s transfer mechanism, which included a forced investment feature. When DCT tokens were sent to the USDT-DCT liquidity pool, 5% of the transferred tokens were automatically swapped for USDT and added to the liquidity pool. This triggered a price swap in the USDT-DCT pool, which the attacker manipulated to inflate the price of DCT tokens.
By exploiting this mechanism, the attacker executed profitable swaps, draining the pool and realizing significant financial gains.
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 DCT Token, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2024).
- 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:
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next DCT Token
The DCT Token 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.