Enigma Hack

TOTAL LOST $500K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2017 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1003 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

Enigma, a decentralized platform that was preparing to raise money via a crypto token sale, had its website and a number of social accounts compromised with the perpetrators netting nearly $500,000 by sending out spam.

Enigma, which was started by a group of MIT graduates, did not lose any money from the attack. Whoever orchestrated it grabbed money from the Enigma community, people who joined the company’s mailing list, or a Slack group of over 9,000 users to learn more about its ICO in September.

The hacker posted Slack messages, altered the website, and spoofed emails to a community list that were made to look official and urged money to be sent to their crypto wallet.

That’s netted the hacker 1,492 in Ether (worth $494,170.68), according to Etherscan:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x29d7d1dd…8ae86b

Users on Reddit found that Enigma CEO Guy Zyskind’s email was accessed by the hacker. His email had been part of hacking of different services in the past and had been dumped on the internet, but seemingly Zyskind had not taken the time to change the password:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6v0vei/warning_enigma_website_and_slack_probably_hacked/

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Enigma
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Other
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Official Website www.enigma.co/
Protocol Twitter/X @EnigmaMPC
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Privacy Zero Knowledge Proofs 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 other 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 Enigma's contract logic - root cause: other
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 Other audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Enigma, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (August 2017).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Other 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

Browse all hacks

These hacks used the same attack technique. Understanding the pattern helps prevent future exploits.

DeFiTuna $570K
Other
Cascade $1.3M
Other
Lumi Finance $264K
Other
Hinkal $820K
Other
AIDCToken $121K
Other
Polymarket $3.0M
Other

Learn to Prevent the Next Enigma

The Enigma 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
Recreate exploit patterns safely Free Trial