DefiBox Hack

TOTAL LOST $24K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2021 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1865 By amount stolen
Auditors 2 Prior security audits

Incident Overview

Defibox discovered an abnormal exchange situation of the EOS-EMOON trading pair on September 16th. After an emergency investigation, the swap contract was suspended on September 17th, and it was reopened on the morning of September 17th after auditing and multiple signings were completed.

This exchange abnormality is caused by the incompatibility between the Defibox Swap contract and the EMOON contract. Before the event, the number of pots was 482636464535179.88 EMOON/4866.1494 EOS. When the contract was suspended, the EMOON pot was 5790970803030.11 EMOON/3.4553EOS, resulting in about 4863 EOS loss.

The Defibox team has eliminated this type of risk caused by other burning tokens and has upgraded the Swap contract to further improve the security of the contract.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project DefiBox
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Exchange (DEX)
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Dexs
Affected Token BOX
Official Website defibox.io/
Protocol Twitter/X @Defiboxofficial
Team Public / Doxxed
Source Code Verified On-Chain

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 DefiBox's contract logic - root cause: exchange (dex)
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, Audit Report 2 — still lost $24K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

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

  • 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

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