Incident Overview
ERC20 Token Bank was targeted in a flash loan attack, but the attacker failed due to a frontrunning by an MEV bot. The bot earned 108,964 $USD.
An unknown attacker attempted to exploit the ERC20TokenBank contract in the Ethereum chain via flash loan. However, their attempt was thwarted by an MEV bot that anticipated and front-run their transaction. As part of this process, the MEV bot paid 1 $ETH as a bribe to gain priority on transaction ordering and earn roughly 60 $ETH profit.
Attacker address:
https://etherscan.io/address/0x0e816b0d…6f3278
MEV Bot:
https://etherscan.io/address/0xc0ffeeba…f29671
Malicious transaction:
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xcd8fe2ef…f301e1
MEV Bot transaction:
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x578a195e…735f26
Incident Report
Protocol Information
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.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to ERC20 Token Bank, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (May 2023).
- Verify all logic paths related to Flash Loan Attack 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.
Free TrialRelated Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next ERC20 Token Bank
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