Eleven Finance Hack

TOTAL LOST $4.5M
Medium Flashloan Burn Function Exploit / Other bsc

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain bsc Incident surface
Recovered $4.2M 93.3% returned
All-Time Rank #454 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

The attacker's address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0xc71e2f58…f11ed6

The transaction behind the attack:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x6450d8f4…906789

The attacker:

- borrowed a flash loan from PancakeSwap with 953,869.62 BUSD, which is returned at the last step with the necessary fee to cover the flash loan cost

- swapped 340,631.23 BUSD for 474,378.75 NRV via PancakeRouter

- added liquidity with 474,378.75 NRV and 366,962.02 USDT into NRV+BUSDT pool via PancakeRouter and minted in return 411,515.29 Pancake LP tokens

- deposited 411,515.29 Pancake LP tokens into Eleven Finance via ElevenNeverSellVault and obtained 411,515.29 11 nrvBUSD LP tokens

- called emergencyburn() to withdraw 411,515.29 Pancake LP tokens without burning any 11 nvrBUSD LP token. Then called withdrawAll() to get extra 411,515.29 Pancake LP tokens with the related 11 nvrBUSD LP tokens burned.

This is classified as a Flash Loans Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Eleven Finance
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) bsc
Attack Technique Flashloan Burn Function Exploit / Other
Classification Ecosystem / Yield Aggregator
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Liquid Staking
Affected Token ELE
Smart Contract Language Solidity
Official Website eleven.finance/
Protocol Twitter/X @ElevenFinance
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
BNB Chain 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 flashloan burn function exploit / other and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with bsc smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Eleven Finance's contract logic - root cause: ecosystem / yield aggregator
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? Likely — with a thorough Flashloan Burn Function Exploit / Other audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $4.5M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Eleven Finance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (June 2021).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Flashloan Burn Function Exploit / Other are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Flash Loans 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.

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Funds Recovery

93.3%

Recovered

$4.2M

Net Loss

301500

Security Audit History

Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Flash Loans Attacks examples →

Flash Loans Attacks

Proof-of-Concept Exploits

1 PoC available
poc-exploits - eleven finance
$ Eleven Finance Doesn’t burn shares

On-Chain Evidence & References

Sources & References

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