How much was lost in the Elron Token hack?

The Elron Token hack resulted in $122K in losses on July 15, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the Elron Token exploit?

The Elron Token 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.

Elron Token Hack

TOTAL LOST $122K

Low Jul 15, 2022 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1457 By amount stolen

Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The Forest Elron Token project has been rugpulled by its own team. They created a pair between ELR/USDT tokens, where the initial deposit was 300k $USDT and 300k $ELR, and after a while they dumped the token taking a profit of 122k.

Details of the Exploit

The token creator deployed the $ELR where the creator is given the minter role, and also transfers ownership to his address: https://bscscan.com/tx/0x1438a06f…b6fc19#eventlog

Also analyzing the code, it was noticed that total supply was minted to this address: https://bscscan.com/address/0xF0C13C7b…D44708

300k tokens were sent from mulitisig's wallet to another address, where 300k $USDT was also sent to create an ELR/USDT pair with a ratio of 1 to 1:

1) The sending path of 300k $ELR from Multisig:

1.1) https://bscscan.com/tx/0xe1c01d64…95c936

1.2) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x01837b52…852678

2) Receiving 300k $USDT from Binance Hot Wallet 6: https://bscscan.com/tx/0x2864bc92…972df9

3) Transferring 300k $USDT to lp creator: https://bscscan.com/tx/0xc5b9b5a5…de05df

4) Add liquidity transaction: https://bscscan.com/tx/0xefaed2ca…5f5f5c

Multisig wallet sent 1M $ELR tokens to the address of the token creator: https://bscscan.com/tx/0xecc3fbdf…9774ef

After some time, unusual behavior was noticed from the address of the token creator, he started sending a bunch of transactions for 13,899 $ELR to the scammer address (B), here is an example of transactions:

1) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x5d05ae17…b9b1a7

2) https://bscscan.com/tx/0xc2b840a0…bf018f

3) https://bscscan.com/tx/0xb86955fe…a8f1e2

After scammer address (B) started dumping the token price by selling $ELR on PancakeSwap, example transactions:

1) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x8e52247e…fb487e

2) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x195b4b03…0dcd7d

3) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x014dd513…0042ea

from the moment the pool was created until July 15, 122k $BUSD was invested, ~$242k was taken from the pool and at the moment 180k $BUSD is still in the pool.

As the time of this writing information on this case is scarce. More sources will be added if the case should develop.

Block Data Reference

Involved addresses:

Token creator - scammer address (A): https://bscscan.com/address/0x2cc11e2c…e5edaa

Scammer address (B): https://bscscan.com/address/0x12b7ec93…81d0f6

Scammer address (C): https://bscscan.com/address/0xf2f78e28…006d44

Multisig wallet on which more than 90% of total supply is stored: https://bscscan.com/address/0xF0C13C7b…D44708

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Elron Token

Date of Incident July 15, 2022

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token ELR

Official Website elron.io/#/home

Protocol Twitter/X @ElronOfficial

Team Anonymous

Source Code Verified On-Chain

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

Ethereum 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 Elron Token'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? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

Audited by Beosin — still lost $122K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Elron Token, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (July 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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Security Audit History

Beosin 2022-07-07 Report

Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://dexscreener.com/bsc/0xf45e5c487cc3f7b77b328b3f460169db628feb8e
02
Web Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20220720091112/https://elron.io/#/home

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Token
Year 2022

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