How much was lost in the Dictum Exchange hack?

The Dictum Exchange hack resulted in $2.1M in losses on December 31, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the Dictum Exchange exploit?

The Dictum Exchange exploit utilized Rugpull. Understanding this attack vector is critical for smart contract auditors and developers building secure DeFi protocols.

How can developers prevent similar smart contract attacks?

Preventing smart contract hacks requires a combination of secure coding practices, thorough security audits, and understanding common attack vectors like reentrancy, oracle manipulation, and access control flaws. Smart Contract Hacking (SCH) provides hands-on training to help developers and auditors identify and prevent vulnerabilities before deployment.

Dictum Exchange Hack

TOTAL LOST $2.1M

Medium Dec 31, 2022 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #635 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Dexs Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Dictum Exchange has rugged pulled. On the 31st of Dec 2022, just after airdropping its $DIC token, the project shut down all of its social networks and performed hard rug from unverified proxy liquidity pool contracts.

Details of the Exploit

The protocol built on the Arbitrum network Dictum Exchange performed hard rug from its LPs.

Most of the contracts of the protocol are built using a proxy upgradeability pattern. In this case, it allows deploying new implementations with any malicious logic. Currently, the source code of all LPs is not verified and includes malicious logic in the burn() function.

This function was called on each LP contract to drain a huge share of liquidity from them.

Currently, all stolen funds are bridged to the Ethereum Mainnet as ETH and stored in the account: 0xaF8f284e…16e21d

Block Data Reference

Scammer addreses:

https://arbiscan.io/address/0xaf8f284e…16e21d

https://etherscan.io/address/0xaF8f284e…16e21d

Liquidity draining TXs:

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0xbe0e8d83…e17112

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0xe7275b59…02b307

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0xe197f911…4c187f

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0x874e189e…667f66

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0xf3b30990…33540a

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0x4812d74f…51c7bc

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0x67ac2279…0723b1

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0xb0f0bc34…e8effc

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0x48805ffa…123876

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Dictum Exchange

Date of Incident December 31, 2022

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Exchange (DEX)

Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Dexs

Affected Token DTOKEN

Official Website dictum.exchange/

Protocol Twitter/X @DictumExchange

Team Anonymous

Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

Base Ecosystem Mode Ecosystem

Protocol Links

GitHub Discord

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 rugpull 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 Dictum Exchange'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? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

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

Verify all logic paths related to Rugpull 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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Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://twitter.com/olimpiocrypto/status/1609183982821818369
02
Source 2 https://twitter.com/DefiyieldSec/status/1609273620039090176

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

MEDIUM

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Exchange (DEX)
Year 2022

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