How much was lost in the Elon Pepe hack?

The Elon Pepe hack resulted in $206K in losses on July 28, 2023.

What attack technique was used in the Elon Pepe exploit?

The Elon Pepe exploit utilized Honeypot. 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.

Elon Pepe Hack

TOTAL LOST $206K

Low Jul 28, 2023 Honeypot

Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1284 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Honeypot Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Elon Pepe suffered an exit scam in the form of a honeypot on July 28, 2023. The total losses amounted to 205,796 $USD or 850 BNB.

Details of the Exploit

Elon Pepe, a BEP20 token trading on PancakeSwap, was exploited in a series of liquidity withdrawals spanning from July 13 to July 28, 2023. The deployer removed liquidity from the LP pool in six transactions, with the largest single withdrawal accounting for 190,000 $USD, or 792 WBNB. The stolen funds were transferred to another EOA, and the majority of the funds remain there as of July 29, 2023.

The total estimated losses are 205,796 $USD, or 850 BNB.

Block Data Reference

Deployer's Address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0xd70e37f3…7b888e

Funds Holder as on July 29, 2023:

https://bscscan.com/address/0xdf9a9cfb…5b9d92

Biggest Liquidity Removal Transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xaf3dcbcf…74243d

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Elon Pepe

Date of Incident July 28, 2023

Attack Technique Honeypot

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Honeypot

Affected Token ElonPepe

Official Website honkhonkerc.com/

Protocol Twitter/X @ClownPepeToken

Team Anonymous

Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

Memes Ethereum 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 Deep understanding of honeypot 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 Elon Pepe's contract logic - root cause: token

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 Honeypot audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Elon Pepe, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (July 2023).

Verify all logic paths related to Honeypot 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/CertiKAlert/status/1684850865708871680

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Honeypot
Root Cause Token
Year 2023

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