Deribit Exchange Hack

TOTAL LOST $28.3M
High #178 All-Time Access Control

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #178 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Access control Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Deribit Exchange exploited via access control. The hot wallet's private keys were compromised which lead to a loss of roughly 28,000,000 $USD.

Details of the Exploit

Deribit Exchange is a cryptocurrency derivatives platform. The project's hot wallet's private keys were compromised on Ethereum and Bitcoin chains. The total funds lost are 9,111 $ETH and 691 $BTC, which is worth 28,317,206 $USD at the moment.

Client assets and cold addresses were not affected, and the loss will be paid by the company said on official Twitter.

Block Data Reference

Attacker addresses:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xb0606f43…4a44cd

https://etherscan.io/address/0x8d08aad4…ec47b4

https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/bc1qw5g8lw4kzltpdcraehy2dt6dqda8080xd6vhl4kg4wwsypwerg9s3x6pvk

Transfer transactions:

https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/6ff66fd113afeb88f6d47e3c0a91b00c9f73c55b0366ca47fc217e8f2c1e0e61

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xdd608c8c…5a102c

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xf3a14bfd…5b66f2

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

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Deribit Exchange
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Access Control
Classification CeFi
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Access control
Official Website www.deribit.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @deribitexchange
Team Public / Doxxed
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Ethereum Ecosystem Polygon Ecosystem BNB Chain Ecosystem
Protocol Links
GitHub

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 Deribit Exchange'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 audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Deribit Exchange, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2022).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Access Control 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.

Free Trial

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

Sources & References

Browse all hacks

These hacks used the same attack technique. Understanding the pattern helps prevent future exploits.

BonkDAO $21.0M
Access Control
Token of Power $472K
Access Control
Humanity Protocol $31.0M
Access Control
Tessera DAO $2.4M
Access Control
Gravity Bridge $5.4M
Access Control
Stake DAO $91K
Access Control

Learn to Prevent the Next Deribit Exchange

The Deribit Exchange 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.

Start Free Trial Browse Attack Library
Recreate exploit patterns safely Free Trial