How much was lost in the DragonEx hack?

The DragonEx hack resulted in $6.0M in losses on March 24, 2019.

What attack technique was used in the DragonEx exploit?

The DragonEx 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.

DragonEx Hack

TOTAL LOST $6.0M

Medium Mar 24, 2019 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2019 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #397 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

DragonEx announced on their official Telegram channel, stating that, on Sunday, March 24, it had suffered a cyberattack that saw cryptocurrency funds owned by users and the exchange "transferred and stolen."

20 cryptocurrencies in total were stolen. The list included the top-five coins by market capitalization: Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), XRP, Litecoin (LTC), and EOS, as well as the Tether (USDT).

Incident Report

Protocol / Project DragonEx

Date of Incident March 24, 2019

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification CeFi

Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Official Website dragonex.io/zh-hans/

Protocol Twitter/X @Dragonex_io

Team Anonymous

Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

Ethereum Ecosystem

Protocol Links

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 DragonEx's contract logic - root cause: cefi

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 DragonEx, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (March 2019).

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.

Free Trial

Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2019/03/26/singapore-based-cryp…

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

MEDIUM

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause CeFi
Year 2019

Learn to Prevent the Next DragonEx

The DragonEx 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