ERC20 Permit Hack

TOTAL LOST $8.8M
Medium Phishing

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #332 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Phishing Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

EOA wallet lost over 4,000,000 $USD due to a phishing attack, further ERC20 Permit exploit.

Details of the Exploit

EOA wallet lost 4,096,849 $USD worth of assets due to phishing attack. The attacker exploited EIP2612 Permit standard, firstly getting the affected user's signature via phishing attack. 2,986,213 $DAI and 1,110,636 $USDC was drained in two transactions and then transferred through multiple EOA addresses.

Permit1 functionality extends ERC20 token standard, allowing optimized approvals. But the standard has significant security issues, which may be cause of exploits like this.

Block Data Reference

Attacker address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x1661f1b2…b23ee3

Malicious transactions:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xadeedf97…720172

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc86ed8ae…ec9c5d

Funds initially transferred to:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x18d02300…9306f2

This is classified as a Phishing Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project ERC20 Permit
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Phishing
Classification Other
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Phishing
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

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 phishing 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 ERC20 Permit'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 Phishing audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to ERC20 Permit, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (March 2023).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Phishing are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Phishing 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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Post-Incident Timeline

  • 2023-08-07

    Another victim lost 2,217,982 $USD worth of sfrxETH via ERC20 Permit Phishing attack. Affected Address: https://etherscan.io/address/0x13c9d9b81513fe8ef119408f916b74118478cb03 Attacker Addresses: https://etherscan.io/address/0x000f1e24f3f0c7e3dd25939dbf0ba61da3c40000 https://etherscan.io/address/0xb1ee1226361e45538f4d507111adb76c351a4555 Malicious Transactions: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7dcd3f764c7f236c223591aeb122c52497ad3dd28a86dff496d0c4d316ee44c5 https://etherscan.io/tx/0x73aadf47041b23aca863467d2ed397f27224afc28a2a8422b52e0305d4a736c4

  • 2023-07-25

    Someone lost 139,000 $USD worth of assets via ERC20 Permit Phishing Affected Address: https://etherscan.io/address/0x419518f13614933bbfafc917c009cdba1edfd84f Attacker Addresses: https://etherscan.io/0x0000553F880fFA3728b290e04E819053A3590000 https://etherscan.io/address/0x4bddb58c542d056ff7c56bc0c6fb92a679455f2f Funds Transfer Transaction: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xdf51686b45c94666dc06ca21e4eae03776bf8189eea598816fdb8de0153e08a4

  • 2023-08-21

    Twitter user @meUP_meQuit lost 846,962 USDC via ERC20-Permit Phishing on Arbitrum chain Victim Address: https://arbiscan.io/address/0x0555a87622600f3787b46390123d8b1c7c23f6cc Scammer Addresses: https://arbiscan.io/address/0x0169a0ab7443bb52f3d16cbd371a10eed335b3a5 https://arbiscan.io/address/0xc04946c6ffa0bb7e0f74de7f534e0363cd26a45c Funds Transfer Transaction: https://arbiscan.io/tx/0xbaad3d3cd4af841334ab505e2c571ce2f7b6b324e273168c4a9d8cc0b03cfd68 Malicious Transaction: https://arbiscan.io/tx/0x6a7300c8d5589a6ea6e2e6d8b27f50762be9180401c0966cb99f0040740c570a

  • 2023-11-15

    Someone lost 1,504,805 aUSDT via Phishing Attack Victim: https://etherscan.io/address/0xc108b793e293f1aac19418e899397e62fdf02575 Scammer: https://etherscan.io/address/0xa7308fbb4effcce7b77b9f8fcb0b564ca44c2896 Malicious Transaction: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x45cc7b9ff7220fbb2b92a1fe6b9a688ae69239392517f2edbab5096aa5c8d005

Related Attack Classes

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

See all Phishing Attacks examples →

Phishing Attacks

Sources & References

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