Defrost Hack

Reported loss $12.0M
Avalanche
Oracle Manipulation

What happened

Defrost Finance experienced attacks against both V2 and V1 in December 2022. Analysis estimated roughly $173,000 lost from V2 and about $12 million from V1. Defrost later reported recovering V1 assets and earmarked 12,850,277 DAI.e for refunds.

Technical root cause

The incidents used different paths: V2's reported flash-loan/reentrancy weakness and V1's privileged collateral and oracle controls. Whether V1 access involved stolen credentials or an insider remained disputed. A refund plan alone does not prove every user received payment.

How it happened

  1. A flash loan supported manipulation of the LSWUSDC price in V2.
  2. In the V1 incident, privileged access allowed addition of fake collateral and a malicious oracle.
  3. The altered setup enabled H2O issuance and extraction of real stablecoin assets.
  4. Defrost's January refund plan described converting recovered ETH to DAI and transferring it to Avalanche for distribution.

Protocol details

Classification Protocol Logic / Privileged Access
Protocol Type CDP
Affected asset / contract MELT
Implementation language Solidity

Funds Recovery

100.0%

Recovered

$12.0M

Net Loss

$0

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