Incident Overview
On July 12, 2024, Dough Finance, a DeFi protocol, lost $1.8 million in digital assets due to a flash loan attack
On July 12, 2024, Dough Finance, a DeFi protocol, lost $1.8 million in digital assets due to a flash loan attack. Web3 security firm Cyvers flagged suspicious transactions and confirmed that Aave's pools were safe, though Dough Finance was heavily impacted. The attacker used the ZK protocol Railgun to fund the attack and swapped stolen USD Coin for 608 ETH, worth about $1.8 million.
Web3 security provider Olympix identified the cause of the exploit as unvalidated call data within the “ConnectorDeleverageParaswap” contract, allowing the attacker to manipulate data during flash loan calls. After the exploit funds were mixed with a Tornado mixer.
Attacker
https://etherscan.io/address/0x6998584b…028ff9
https://etherscan.io/address/0x2913d90d…c04a0f
https://etherscan.io/address/0x34611f6b…2ae893
Example Attack tx:
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x3192b5c7…2a608f
Tornado deposit example:
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xd5c92569…3170e2
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 Dough Finance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (July 2024).
- Verify all logic paths related to Unvalidated call data exploit / 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 TrialRelated Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Proof-of-Concept Exploits
On-Chain Evidence & References
- Twitter/X Alert https://x.com/CertiKAlert/status/1811668992882307478
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next Dough Finance
The Dough Finance 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.